Fantasia Down: Darkness of Eternity
by dib07
Summary: After a chaos control that seems to have split time and dimension, Shadow and Sonic find themselves in another world. A world where they are alone. Until the night falls. They must recollect the emeralds, survive and fight to find an answer. Story: Discontinued.
1. Chapter 1

**~ Fantasia Down: Darkness of Eternity ~**

By Dib07

Disclaimer: Sonic and Shadow belong to SEGA. This story is purely for fun. The idea however, is mine.

**Rating: T**

**Foreword:**

Right, now that you have got thus far, there are some rules I need to lay down first about Fantasia Down. 'Forerunners' is a term relating to humans. In the Archie comics this rules applies to the term 'overlanders.' Well, mine is the same.

Sonic and Shadow's characters may differ from the mainstream of their games and cartoon series. This is because I have given them room to grow and develop, unlike Sega. Also, I make my characters realistic where a wound can kill. I do NOT make heroes so that they can be stupidly powerful and unrealistic. Also, Shadow's size differs to Sonic. Shadow is a lot bigger, both in muscle structure and bone length.

Thank you for reading.

**Last note:** Those of you who wish for a Sonadow fic, let me know. I am open to suggestion. Other than that I shall proceed with thier relationship as purely platonic.

/

**Eternal: **_adjective_ **1 **lasting or existing forever. **2 **valid for all time: _eternal truths._

Derivatives: eternally _adverb_

Origin: Latin; _aeternalis_

'_Dark will thy doom be, darker still.__'_

_Alp__'__s Vision - Lord Byron_

**Chapter one : A Sudden Change**

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><p>It was quite amazing, and startling as well. As the two of them looked left and right, expecting something normal to occur, something numbly expectant like waking from a dream, it never happened. They remained on the dull grassy bank with a chilling wind lapping playfully at their fur.<p>

"Well, Shades, you've done it again."

Shadow's mouth was shut tightly and he stood up straight, keen eyes looking out blankly across the unfamiliar, unrecognizable landscape. "You know Mobius." He said at last, tolerating no more nonsense. No more things of unexplainable origin. "Do you _know _this place?"

Sonic heard his tension. His stress. It made his back quills reflexively tighten defensively. He turned himself and didn't stand. He felt too weak and battered. "No." Hoping his simple answer would satisfy his black comrade. "No I do not."

_But so what? _He thought sparingly, _we__'__re safe, aren__'__t we? Someplace - new? Why should it matter?_

Shadow obviously wasn't thinking along the same lines. "I don't like this." He started to move off. Taking long, striding steps, arms folded like red lipped iron across his affronted profile. Eyes hard and mean. All the while looking precisely for something he'd know. Something not out of place.

Ardently worried and grim with anxiety at last, Sonic wobbled to his feet and pounced his gaze around, to and fro. The world opened out welcomingly enough. Yet the sun shone down hard and dire upon them as if its warmth, its very light was now cranked and frosty with age. The valleys, conferred with dimple, dark forests, swollen with bleak color. Mist rose from the east from what could have been a dank pond or a marsh.

"Look, no birds." Shadow started again as he himself peered upward, mentally wishing upon heaving flocks of creatures. The skies were empty and dry, as if the very clouds were made out of acrid cotton.

There was no sign of anything. Anywhere.

"When you said you used chaos control, coupled with the passage of time, were you aware of time moving forwards, or back?" Sonic presently asked, admiring the gold ring still clasped lovingly around his wrist like a clamp.

Shadow spat as if it were an accusation. "How was I supposed to know, dummy? I had to act, didn't I? It's me that does everything around here anyway while you sit and wait for it all to happen while you suck your thumb!"

"I was only asking."

Shadow tightened his shoulders and looked ready to charge away into one of his sulky bursts of outrage. This time however he clenched himself still until the frustration and indignation passed. With a clearer head he kept pacing the scenery with his sight until his feet started taking him wherever they pleased.

Less inclined to follow, Sonic sat back down on the cold grass again, musing silently. He hadn't been able to remember much. Just the splitting of noise and color. The spinning sensation of no gravity. Not knowing which way was up or down. Nor even how long they had been travelling for - in the sense of warp speed or not. Maybe they had really gone nowhere. And if that were so, where was everybody else?

A sense of exploration still whizzed wholly in his body like an untamable instinct. He stood up and began moving towards a sharp dune of rock on his left side, the opposite way Shadow had apparently - decisively taken.

Great old willows, with their dropping branches like overhanging curtains, glimmered upon the outer workings of the rock where weeds poked out of cracks in green splurges of color. Climbing the rock he squatted atop it and looked out, ears perked high and strong. There was not a sound that he could catch. No birds. Shadow was still correct on that one. No insects either. And the languid chill in the land foretold no summer or a gentle, pleasant spring. Autumn? Then where was the migrating birds?

And another thing. Why were the forests beyond on the horizon so dark and foreboding? Trees were always a gentle, natural source of food and refuge. They were homes. Guardians. Life. The ones here however, evicted some kind of misplacement. As if they drew on hurt and pain rather than soothed and succored it.

Mountains choked the southern line of trees. Mountains were natural too. Mobius was filled with their hard fortifications and dizzying splay of height and majestic strength.

"I'll wait until it gets dark." Sonic muttered faintly, "then I can read the stars and know exactly where we are."

This little bit of reliable knowledge made him feel sturdier and more relaxed. But while the sun was still twinkling in couth hues, he moved on further, pushing through the long, sharp grass and stumbling upon strange, alien flowers and plants. If this was truly Mobius, than he was on a continent he had never been to before. In his earlier days he had raced across the whole world discovering and exploring. He avoided the ocean of course, and any rivers he came across, but on the whole he had searched and enjoyed the world twice over. Maybe Shadow had simply - innocently warped them to a foreign land on Mobius in their present time.

"I don't get it." He jumped at Shadow's voice as the elder hedgehog stood gruffly behind him. He had climbed the rock and had gone after him without making a sound. He would make a nasty enemy any day. "I did something. I must have. But with now only one emerald, where have the rest gone?"

"Somewhere. They always do. I say we wait until dark when the stars are out. What about the Ark? Can you see that, even now in the daytime?"

The Ark was always plainly visible, despite time or season, darkness or light. Its outer shell, its arduous sheathing, never went unnoticed. Whether you wanted to see it blotted against the sky like a stillborn sun or not. Shadow looked. The sky was blank and offered up no answers.

Shadow hissed and started to run, nose held high as he scoured the heavens with sudden misgiving.

Sonic followed as fast as he could, though his sore muscles and ripe bruises only battered him back down into a meek trot worthy of a snail's pace. He instead warily regarded Shadow peel off into the distance, and even now his stance looked positively fuming with uncharted menace.

Sonic gazed upward, raising his hand to block the sun's rays from hurting his eyes. "Huh. No Ark."

_Maybe its behind a few clouds._

But he knew deep down that it wasn't yet hope kept him searching nonetheless.

Upon fastening his eyes back down to the sordid plains that were rumpled with dark grass and leaves, he spied Shadow racing back in broad, graceful strokes of his hover boots. The streaks of light tearing up at his heels made the brazen sun seem even more dry and rough.

"It's gone." He heard him cry before he had even reached him again. "The Ark - it's gone. It's not there!" For once a new kind of frozen panic had clouded Shadow's eyes and countenance.

"Maybe we're on the other side of Mobius." Considered Sonic.

"Oh I don't know." Shadow looked truly lost. "Maybe. If that is so, we'll have to run and travel until we do see it. Then - then I'll know - I'll see -"

"See what?"

"See that it's there! That not everything we used to know is gone!"

They did indeed travel. Lightly through the wan day and saw nothing. No other animals. No forerunners for that matter or birds. The wind rocked and creaked through the dry, cackling forests and the sun warmed rivers and streams where fish frolicked like butterflies. But their grey skin was hard and sharp with bristly spines and since they were not particularly hungry, they pressed on.

When the sun began to descend into a lathering afternoon, midges appeared in puffs of dense, moving clouds. Their presence brought some normality back to the hedgehogs.

"What if we're stranded in another time zone?" Sonic asked as he tossed a white stone back and forth between his busy hands. "Or we've excelled at the use of the emeralds and gone further than we're supposed to?"

"Nonsense." Shadow grimaced, not even glaring at him. "The Ark will be in the sky soon. And we may have to cross an ocean to leave this strange place and go back home. But until then do not mention time or emeralds again!"

"Okay, okay!"

Despite the blandness of the sun that didn't cherish them with warmth, they got too hot in their wanderings and lazed in the shadows of a little woodland out skirting a wild lush grassland. With nothing to eat the grass (or so it seemed) it seemed to grow in vast quantities and to great heights. Sometimes it dwarfed them but they liked the cover it brought.

Violet and black butterflies twirled hazardly above them as they rested. In all due honestly they could have kept going for another few hours despite sweating under the sun. However Shadow, much like a strict parent with no sense of fun and mischief, told him that they should slow it down a little and continue when the sun was lower. When it was cooler. But Sonic - as he turned to lay on his side in the jungle of grass, knew it was because of him. His bruises and hurting body. He had managed to keep the pace, refusing to let any amount of pain hitch him up. Yet Shadow saw straight through his struggles and ordered a long repose for the afternoon.

Shadow did not sleep. Despite no signs of danger, no signs in fact of anything, the hedgehog kept a constant, vigilant eye around them. Sonic had already told him not to bother. And got ignored. So choosing not to worry, Sonic slept dozily. Twitching his ear whenever a butterfly landed on it or scratching his rump when the grass blades teased his fur.

It was a nice day. He thought. Despite their situation and not having a clue where they were.

**TBC**

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><p><strong>Please R &amp; R!<strong>


	2. Chapter 2 Meet the Habitants

**~ Fantasia Down: Darkness of Eternity ~**

Disclaimer: Sonic and Shadow belong to SEGA. This story is purely for fun. The idea however, is mine.

Rating: 18 +

Summary: After a chaos control that seems to have split time and dimension, Shadow and Sonic find themselves in another world. A world where they are alone. Until the night falls. They must recollect the emeralds, survive and fight to find an answer. But when darkness comes, so do the vanguard. As black and as lethal as death herself. And after each emerald comes a new threat to tear down their lives.

Time is running out. Each trap gets more deadly. The riddles more complex. The darkness grows.

This new world is rotten with secrets.

* * *

><p><strong>Dib07:<strong> Thanks very much for your kind reviews.

**An onymous** : So glad you gave some time for your review and to share your views. I couldn't email you personally so I'll upload it here instead.

About your views on Sonic and Shadow's relationship... I am going to be very honest here as I'm afraid being truthful is part of my programming! Fantasia Down was actually a novel stemmed from others before it, and Fantasia Down has got them to this point. Don't get me wrong, Fantasia Down is a complete stand-alone story and does not need the others that have so shaped it. Shadow has helped Sonic and his friends a few times, sometimes out of his way, at others unintentionally. They share a common bond because of past adventures and dangerous times. Also, things will be explained in further chapters, especially with what made Shadow perform the Chaos Control so violently in the first place.

Thanks again for your opinion. It's means a lot to me.

**Chapter two : Meet the Habitants**

'_The sleep of reason breeds monsters.__'_

_Goya_

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><p>Rest was easy. The dreams came and went like tides drifting along the shores. When Sonic woke, his deep green eyes opening to a sudden darkness he found most surprising, he couldn't remember anything that he had dreamt.<p>

It was dark. Night. The buzz and song of insects was thick and comforting. They gave him the odd sense of home. Though it brought a hint of nostalgia with it.

Shadow still sat in his usual defensive posture and presumably hadn't moved for hours. His ears were stiff and erect. Tail bushy and still.

"Sonic, you awake at last?"

"Yes. You could have woken me."

Without pledging an answer, Shadow got up and walked silently through the grass as a crescent of a moon spilled the woodland in silvers. "Shades, why'd you wait until nightfall! We can hardly see!"

"I had to know."

"Know what?" Sonic rushed on to keep astride with him as they walked. The air was mild. The night was soothing - full of crickets and the rustle of leaves in the darkness, even if he did have to stumble a few times on the uneven ground.

"The stars."

Once mentioned Sonic looked up. The stars were all there. Silent and mystifying as they always had been since the dawn of the ages. But they were different. Not in the designs and patterns Sonic remembered.

"I - I don't understand it -"

They were entirely different. As if some rude god had jousted along, only to resemble them to his own liking. His own design.

"Either we are still on the other side of the world," Shadow reckoned in the darkness, the faint traces of his red eyes beaming along in the night that matched the pelt of his coat, turning him almost invisible, "or we aren't on it - anymore."

"That's way insane!" Sonic shot back, "we can't! The emeralds don't have that kind of power, do they?"

"I'm not quite so sure anymore."

Upon leaving the long woodland and its bubbling streams behind them, Shadow stopped near a lee of rocks, staring to the north. Impatient, Sonic went to glance at what the elder one had suddenly become so intriguing when he paused also, eyes widening in disbelief. For shining in the far horizon like a friendly beacon was what appeared to be a long, white spire. They had not seen it by day. Perhaps the sunlight had been too dominant and rich, but now forlorn and under the shifty, shyness of the moon, it glowed out hotly like a knife. And it was far, far away.

"Shades?"

"It's a tower." Shadow retorted crisply, mouth dry. "It's - I - I don't like it. It brings out a feeling of foreboding. We should avoid it - for now."

"Why?" Sonic asked at once, his fear and surprise at the sight of the tower peeling away into curiosity and excitement, "what do you know about it that makes you want to leave it alone? For all we know, that could be where our answers lie. In that tower! Don't you want to find out?"

Shadow looked back grimly at him for a few moments. Red eyes glittery and comely in the heavy blackness of night where the moon wasn't strong enough to unmask their expressions. When he replied his voice was low and soft. "I don't know what that place is and it may well be something significant. But for now we shouldn't go near it."

There was something urgent. Something deep and worrying in the subtle tones of his voice that made Sonic cease his exuberant questioning. Shadow was painfully right, most of the time.

_But maybe - just maybe -_

So they trudged on. Seeking the Ark that probably wasn't there.

Under the watchful eye of a weak moon they walked easily along the tall, unfamiliar grass and under great heaving bushes of holly and hornbeam. Large crab trees and elms dotted the meadows like lonely soldiers who had taken some unheard vow to grow apart. No birds.

_Mobius always has birds. _Sonic got the odd, drifting sense of fear and anguish. The dark hem of the trees seemed to be watching. Silently. Yet how could they? They were merely trees. Old sentinels that grew and prospered. Shed their leaves and seeds. Then slept in winter. _So why do I get this sense that they__'__re watching?_

The two hedgehogs, two small specks drifting through the foliage like lost ants, ploughed into a big, gaping forest. The staunch trees seemed to welcome them in as if they were guests. Their great boughs and trunks bore over them like legs from a giant. Black leaves bristled out like fat eyes above them.

Watching.

Sonic strayed from Shadow's direct route and picked up a red apple that must have fallen from its mother tree. He saw its shiny surface glint in the bay of the moon for only a moment - but a moment was plenty.

Dusting it off, stomach mumbling in hunger, he rose his mouth to its supple texture to take a bite when his ears picked up a faint sound from the darkness. The sound of a foot pressing ever so gently on grass.

His instincts flew into overdrive, but in case of being heard he could not call for Shadow.

Sonic stood, wavering on the spot. Flight or fight. Maybe it was a woodpigeon despite the lack of bird sightings? Or a wild roe deer who was just as worried about him as he was of it.

What if it wasn't?

The pressing darkness suddenly made him feel ill and completely exposed. He could see nothing in front or behind! Only the languid, steely sky above dotted in unreadable stars.

The sound came again. Closer.

_Shades, oh where the seven stars are you?_

He knew they shouldn't have come here! Into a deep, old, wicked forest in the middle of the night!

Where was the noise coming from?

He turned slowly, eyes groping in the black to look for something that probably wasn't even there. But there was. Grinning and hanging there as if waiting to be discovered. Like a bad dream. Waiting to jump out and scare you.

It had been behind him. The entire time. It stood, pinned into a standing position like a puppet ready for the strings to be pulled. And the eyes, malefic eyes that poured a bloodier red that made Shadow's luscious orbs pale to pink in comparison.

"Shades -"

The mouth opened, revealing a full jaw of white teeth that were blinding against the black. Then it lunged.

Sonic had the distinct advantage of being the fastest thing alive. And as he peeled into unfathomable speed that made swifts and hares mutter in jealously, the thing roared after him like a thirsty engine.

Sonic couldn't take it anymore. Though he whistled far ahead of it in earnest as the cannonball of a thing jiggered behind, he could see eyes, red, lingering eyes glued into the darkness of the forest, surrounding him. Everywhere.

"SHADOW!"

The thing picked up speed, haunting red eyes piercing the dark like beams from a car. Another leapt in front of Sonic and impressive white jaws went to close around his left ear. Sonic, a knack or pure instinctual desires to survive, dipped his head low and skidded under it, feeling its dark, hot fur pass over the top of his skull. Then he was up and away again, screaming for his comrade.

Warm red eyes came floating towards him. Crimson spines tainting his pelt just a little to give the impression that he had just dipped his quills in paint accidentally. Shadow was with him. And he was angry too.

"Sonic, why are you yelling and screaming!"

White teeth flashed forwards, aiming straight for his open arm. Shadow reacted just in time and pulled back, but the snap of jaws crunched on the nip of flesh just above his elbow.

"Should we run?" Sonic cried, voice pitched into a squeal of fear.

"No. We fight you coward."

Shadow turned and spun a kick in the precise direction the creature had dropped to after biting him. His heel struck down on air. And next the dark furred beast had turned from their left, their rear and snapped into them. Its huge legs chuffed Sonic aside as its huge mouth charged at Shadow. The elder hedgehog rolled away and flexed his spines up, bristling every quill upward to cause hurt to anything that touched him. Then he dashed towards the exit of the forest in the hopes that better moonlight would help him see what he was up against. Sonic followed close behind, peering over his shoulder every second and seeing thousands of red eyes stalk behind them.

The moonlight, restful and tranquil, reposed upon the meadows around the outskirts of the forest. The hedgehogs burst from the confines of the malignant trees to see the slobbering creatures dashing after them like race horses.

They were the largest generic wolves that Shadow had ever seen. As they burst from the shadows of the trees, revealing their hunkering great bodies, their red eyes seem to whistle and sing in hunger. White jaws, whiter even than snow, opened once more to scoop them into a crushing pool of bones. Their bodies - large and powerful - were a true midnight black. Perfect for ambushing in the dark. And their eyes were evil. Shadow knew that animals - with the exception of forerunners - could not be evil. Animals didn't have that sense of betrayal. Senseless anger and possessive, jealous behavior that had so befitted Robotnik. No. Animals didn't cause personal hurt - they ran on engines of instinct and wit. But these wolves that were racing towards them on all fours - seemed to swelter with hideous hate and cold nightmares.

"Shadow!" Sonic screamed, "run! There are five of them! And their teeth -!"

"Fuck you, Sonic and hide behind a bush if you have to. Leave the fighting to the adults." Like that he ran into them and scored a wolf across the muzzle. He heard Sonic holler something at him, something like the words _vanguard _or it could have been _vanuard._ It didn't make any sense, so Shadow just shut him off from his mind as he crashed and hit into the five strong pack as if they were bunnies. But these so called bunnies ripped back at him in pure loathing and power. They weren't afraid. That was another thing about them. Animals - pure animals only fought as a last resort. Not for food or to play. Injury was too risky. It mostly meant death in the challenging cold world of the wild. Fighting only happened if it was the only way. Or the mating season, when the instincts were clouded with adrenaline. When usurping testosterone made any male reckless with the desire to copulate with anything that moved.

But these dark beasts with their drooling red eyes - seemed more like machines. He expected to see clockwork under their skins as soon as he would bite and tear it off. Maybe screws would pop out of their wounds.

Or see metal springs jut out from their mouths.

One of them slashed white teeth into his leg, knocking him from his thoughts. Its hulking great paws tried to knock him down so that it could pour its teeth into his vulnerable belly and dig into his intestines. Shadow had to ignore the pain as he felt blood swell down his arm and emitted a bright, yellow flash of chaos into its face. The sudden light that brushed upwards before the huge, ugly beast made it start for a moment but the other members of the pack clapped their muzzles at him vengefully.

"Chaos spear!" Lances of bright power marked into the savages, causing them to flinch back at the pain and the blinding light. One of the smaller ones howled in surprise. _Take it. _One that he had not seen pelted into his spine. But it was knocked back by a small, blue hedgehog.

Again the wolves came, clobbering forwards like furry dragons. One of them clipped their jaws around Sonic's leg and ripped him into the air with frightening ease. Shadow made to move, and had to punch both his fists into the skull of an approaching wolf with all the strength he could pull. A good rounded kick struck two of them in the jaw, but they merely gazed on, indifferent to their injuries and their eyes flashed with sickening evil. The kind of evil you were only supposed to be comfortable with in hell.

It was no good and none of them seemed to be bleeding or have any sign of injury, despite Shadow lashing at them with everything he had.

_One last try._

While Sonic was being mobbed and lacerated, Shadow kicked into the pack, growling and roaring like the rest of them. Then his fur licked into a pasty, ethereal red. Sonic saw the change instantly and tore himself free of the wolves and ran just before Shadow unleashed his power.

"CHAOS BLAST!"

A trumpet of power waved from the hedgehog, engulfing the shocked wolves in cocoons of greasy red. Trees were blasted backwoods, their leaves spitting behind them like rain. Flowers and dark, menacing looking plants were weeded out by the wind and were tossed away from the force. Stones and rocks cascaded into the far reaches of night, Sonic being stricken by them, even as he ran to get away. Then, a perilously large, unforgivable lump of rock bashed him in the head and he catapulted forwards in his flight, only to lose control of his legs and roll dangerously down a hill and into a tree. A tree that must have been waiting for him to bash into.

Grieving into darkness, pain long and agonizing, Sonic slipped back into the grass like a doll and melted into the darkness of an even deeper night were red eyes rolled in delight.

**TBC**

Whoops, Shadow! Should have left him more time to get away!

I'm not very good at leaving footnotes! Anyways, look out for the next chapter and thank you for reading! Please drop a line!


	3. Chapter 3 The Emerald Speculation

**~ Fantasia Down: Darkness of Eternity ~**

Disclaimer: Sonic and Shadow belong to SEGA. This story is purely for fun. The idea however, is mine.

Rating: T

Summary: After a chaos control that seems to have split time and dimension, Shadow and Sonic find themselves in another world. A world where they are alone. Until the night falls. They must recollect the emeralds, survive and fight to find an answer. But when darkness comes, so do the vanguard. As black and as lethal as death herself. And after each emerald comes a new threat to tear down their lives.

Time is running out. Each trap gets more deadly. The riddles more complex. The darkness grows.

This new world is rotten with secrets.

* * *

><p><strong>Dib07:<strong> A massive thank you to all my reviewers and those who are reading this and have enjoyed it thus far. My only regret is how short and slow this chapter is. I promise they will escalate with speed, conflict and depth as we progress. Building this new world for them has been fun and challenging.

**An onymous:**

I really hope that you stick with this story. You won't be disappointed, as this story progresses it gets pretty freaky. You're right, and leaving it without an explanation too long will ruin what I'm trying to build. I'm going to put subtle explanations into each chapter (I hope) until we know for sure what has happened to them. The next problem will be how they will get back home.

Your support is huge to me, and I'm glad you liked 'The Sonic Theory,' too.

Your perception of the characters in this story is spot-on. I am smiling so much right now! Sonic is exactly that – he depends on the natural world and Shadow is a no-nonsense, confident creature who believes in facts and reality.

Little Sonic here is extremely complicated. During the past he has suffered bad times, and it's up to Shadow (or not) to get his confidence back. You may say, 'what? Sonic without… confidence?' Well, you will just have to wait and see!

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><p><strong>Chapter three : The Emerald Speculation<strong>

In the soft glow of confusion nestled deep in harbored dreams, he became acutely aware of something dripping close by. _Drip. Drip. _Without pause or reason. It went on and on. Constant. Like rain. Only not as muted. He could smell thick, rich plants.

He remembered the castle. Everywhere… flames. Charging and biting. The spilled oil and the gas leak spurting from the giga-ton egg bomb that had failed to go off. Robotnik himself charging into them with his machines because of the chaos emeralds. Because… because he couldn't stand to have them destroyed with everything else. He was so angry. His rage made the fire look meek and unthreatening.

Eyes. Like the vanguard...

And the dripping sound. He grew weary of it like an itch that just wouldn't ease him no matter how many times he scratched at it. And a voice now, closer and more persistent than even the soft titters of dripping. _Sonic! Sonic! - can - hear me? Sonic?_

He moved his head and went to speak but all he did was garble incoherent words.

Shadow's gruff tone chuffed into him even more resolutely and tenaciously than before. If that were possible. "Sonic, hey, wake up, darn it! We're safe now. I - I chased them off."

Sonic knew him too well. He could tell by his subtle hesitations that he was lying. "Vanguard." Sonic breathed out at last in what felt like a huge accomplishment not worth mentioning again. "They were - vanguards."

"What's a vanguard?"

Sonic edged up a little, opening his eyes slowly. It was light. The flowers and plants decked at his hands and torso were bathed in fresh moisture and warmth. It was morning. And around them came the steady drip of an indecisive spell of rain. Shadow must have moved (carried) him to a little meager bit of shelter, under bay leaf plants that were enough for now to hold the light rain off them. Shadow himself was covered in deep scratches and bruising. His lower eyelid had swollen and his arm that had been nipped at the start of the attack was covered in _do-it-yourself _gauze - which had been made from plant material. He squatted near Sonic, eyeing him closely while the smaller hedgehog roused from his sleep.

"It's an old type of generic wolf." He told the Ultimate Life Form hazily, feeling his head start to ache a little just by lifting it, "long been extinct. They evolved didn't they? Into the wolves we know. Into Lupe's brood. Anthropomorphism, like us. I think old Robotnik kept the last generic wolf alive as a pet. Whether it worked out or not I don't know. Honestly, Robotnik loathing animals and then he keeps one and feeds it?"

"Rumors. Old stories." Shadow said blandly "I heard that one too. Heard it was made up."

Sonic nodded, then winced and stopped when it caused a long beat of pain to lather his brain in ice. How hard had that piece of rock hit him?

And the tree - rearing up as if to grab him.

"So, you chased them off - the vanguards."

That hesitation again. "Yes. My chaos blast sent them home. Then I carried your sorry ass here and waited for the sun to come up. So, these vanguards - were they just like the ones before this? I - I mean - back in the past of Mobius. Were they always this - brutal?" _And savage? Without any hint of fear?_

"Not that I remember, no. They were just like ordinary wolves. Nothing special. That was why most of them mutated and evolved. The rest must have just died. If they were as strong as these guys, they'd eat the whole planet up and no one else would have taken part in the mutation!"

Shadow nodded. "And you? You took a beating. Your head hurt?"

"Yeah. But I'll be fine."

"So you say."

"So, where are we?"

Shadow shrugged, as if not wholly interested or concerned over that trivial matter. "That forest they attacked us in - I carried you back to where we started. On the grassy bank. Away from the forest. Far away."

_Great. Back to the beginning. All that effort - gone. With a few new wounds to show off for it._

"Why didn't you use - the emerald?"

Shadow lifted it from his protective quills and glanced despicably at it. "It's dead. No life within it. I must have used all its energies to bring us to this place." It lay still and cold in his open hand. As ordinary as a stone. Which was unsettling. Sonic was too used to seeing them glow and pulsate with unlimited strength.

"Well, if we have this one, there's got to be more."

Shadow shrugged again. That look of disinterest was slowly starting to annoy the cobalt hero. "Maybe. I could sense one earlier, but the signal's gone. Too far away I guess. But if I sensed it, they've got to be around here - somewhere."

"So, let's start looking."

"No." Shadow's answer was more strict this time and his eyes beheld a look of concern and pressing doubt. "First we have to find food and proper shelter. It'll rain harder soon. You must be hungry. I know I am. We haven't eaten since we got here and there's plenty of water. What I've gathered so far - is that these vanguards you keep pressing about - there's been no sign of them since daybreak. If my judgment is correct, then they prefer to hunt by night. Which means that by day, we should be safe."

_If my judgment is correct._

Sonic sighed and felt the bump along the top left temple of his skull that joined up with his cranium. It bolted in pain whenever he tried to touch it, no matter how light the contact. His legs were also bothered by slashes and claw marks. Some deeper cuts were still bleeding, but they'd heal.

"How do I look?" The hero asked, having no mirror to see the bruises that he was sure were there.

"Like a dumb hedgehog." Shadow said unhelpfully before standing to leave to begin a half-hearted search for material for a shelter.

Together they grabbed branches from any trees with loose enough limbs that were of easy height to reach and yank off. The leaves and twigs were dabbed on top to make a roof of some kind, and just as Shadow predicted, a tropical rainstorm flushed down from the skies in bothersome storms. Sonic, determined, kept on going as they waded through hard ground that had sharply turned to running mud. The trees thrashed about wildly in the sudden western winds and with their shelter soaked and being torn to bits, Shadow relocated their work to a soft hollow of stone in between a gathering of tall, silver stones. They remade the roof (the leaves weren't too damaged) and stocked the boughs against the entrance like a doorway, barricading the inside from the outside. The hollow within was small and cramped, barely enough room for two hedgehogs. But as it was still early in the day, Shadow didn't want to retire now. They had to find food and then plot their next move before nightfall. And if those vanguards returned - mouth slick with white teeth and eyes as hollow as hell - they'd tear down their shelter in moments before ripping their throats out.

"Sonic -" The pouring rain thickened and sung like a tempest. The skies had grown impassably dark and ill. "You go and find food. Anything edible."

Sonic looked ready to argue. His ears were flat and he was grimacing, but that might have been because of the rain. "What will you do?"

"The same. But we must split up if we are to find anything. We'll meet back here. If you get lost -"

"Yeah, okay. If I get lost I'll scream!" He gave a toothy smile, "just be careful."

"You too." They looked into each other's eyes and then silently nodded at one another before separating.

With water splashing down his face Shadow took off, skating fast across a slippery, unsafe terrain. The clouds looked sober with madness above him while the sun had abandoned all hope and had hidden somewhere in the sky. The hills jutted out bleakly, their once warm green colors of a warm day now bleached and dead against the wet weather. As he raced on, feeling very alone without the company of the blue hero, he fancied he felt something. In the air, like wire. Only the sensation had gone and he was left standing in the rain, scenting after it. It had wavered in the air before him like a smell. A throng of distant energy.

He knew the taste of it. It was as familiar as a mother's touch. It was an emerald. Somewhere, waiting. In this strange, hellish land.

_Why__'__s it so empty here?_

_Where have I taken us?_

_Is this all - my fault?_

Following the thin trace of a chaos emerald, he tossed away his other food collecting duties and raced forwards, hoping this way would be towards it.

He had taken a rough path and was proved corrected when the power dithered stronger upon his senses like pollen. Sweet and seductive. Even against this driving rain and the scattering wind.

It was miles away. But not quite as far as he had been expecting. He didn't exactly know how _big _this world was that they were in and he doubted more and more that this place - was Mobius.

And if it wasn't - then where were they?

And how were they going to get out and return home?

_Have you ever wondered _- spoke a voice in his head that came quietly of its own accord - _that this place is Mobius? Only you__'__re in a distant, possible future? Or even thousands - no - millions of years in the past - even before Sonic__'__s ancestors?_

The rain leveled off a little as the wind took an eastern angle, far softer than its earlier charge. Shaking the worst of the deluge from his fur like a dog (he really wanted a towel at this point) he dashed to the edge of a hill bathed in wet, dripping conifers and tall, alpine trees of evergreen. From there he looked to the west and saw a smudge of darkness in the belly of the horizon.

_That__'__s the place. That__'__s where its hiding. _

_Did it just fall there of its own accord after I__'__d used them?_

_Yes. That must be._

He looked upward at the grey skies.

_And still no Ark._

"I suppose the emeralds existed in the past but in the future as well?"

_Well, they are indestructible._

His thoughts trailed back to the vanguards again with dismal worry.

_If there are no other animals here to feed upon - how could these wolves - survive?_

It just didn't work. Past, present or future. You did not have an ecosystem with just one lethal predator.

**TBC**

**Dib07: **Look out for the next chapter later this week. Thank you all again. And thank Sonic. Without him I would have stopped writing a long time ago.


	4. Chapter 4 Shadow

**~ Fantasia Down: Darkness of Eternity ~**

By Dib07

Disclaimer: Sonic and Shadow belong to SEGA. This story is purely for fun. The idea however, is mine.

**Rating: T **

After a chaos control that seems to have split time and dimension, Shadow and Sonic find themselves in another world. A world where they are alone. Until the night falls. They must recollect the emeralds, survive and fight to find an answer. But when darkness comes, so do the vanguard. As black and as lethal as death herself. And after each emerald comes a new threat to tear down their lives.

Time is running out. Each trap gets more deadly. The riddles more complex. The darkness grows.

This new world is rotten with secrets.

Dib07: A very quick update with a longer chapter this time. Enjoy!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter four : Shadow<strong>

'_Smiles on pale misfortune's brow_

_Soft reflection__'__s hand can trace;_

_And o__'__er the cheek of sorrow throw_

_A melancholy grace.__'_

_Foresight and Retrospection Human Only - Thomas Gray_

* * *

><p>Shadow, the Ultimate Life Form and protector of a Mobius now long gone from his presence, stood atop the hill surveying the land with his arms dutifully folded. The rain at length had eased off entirely. First it spat and drizzled for a time until the sun rose from the clouds and made a peek at the shape of its world. The water droplets eased away and the light revealed muddy paths, saturated pastures and soggy clumps of woodland that stood sad and shivery under the vigil of the sun. Shadow sighed and ran back the way he had come, making short work of a few miles with easy, fast strides of his hover shoes. He was swollen with determination to get the emeralds. All six of them. For they could provide an answer whereas at the same time they may not. And there was only one way to find out.<p>

He returned to the shelter to find Sonic fast asleep in the hollow behind the barricade of tree branches. Inside it was dry and there was a pile of wet, yet fresh apples and pears outside the hole like an offering to the gods. He had done well in such short time.

Shadow plucked up a pear and wondered if he should go now while Sonic slept to grab this emerald - or wait for him to rouse. Sonic did look tired and with sore bruises. His breathing was deep as his sides rose and fell steeply. It didn't seem fair to wake him. But Shadow wasn't keen on waiting either.

"No, I'll do it alone." He spoke aloud as he stepped back from the shelter, stepping into a deep puddle of muddy water as he did so. "I guess I'll see you later, Sonic." He shot away, down a soggy embankment, past a rushing stream and through a bright woodland being warmed by the sun. As he ran quickly and effortlessly, he devoured his pear and then tossed the core over his shoulder without thought.

As he powered his way towards the emerald across vast green lands and around forests rather than through them (in case of any restless vanguard), the sensation of its power became almost impossible to ignore. It was like beating back the urge to mate. And Shadow's unique link with these highly sought gems only affected _him _in this way. Sonic could sense them weakly only at close distance.

Zipping across the unknown world, Shadow reached the place where all his instincts were jibbing at him to go. Where the emerald had to be sitting, just waiting, _begging _to be taken.

He was met by a sharp degree of disappointment. It stabbed into his belly like indigestion. For before him, in the middle of the valley as if it had been formed especially for such a task, was a mote. A mote of water surrounding a small island in the very middle. And there was no way across. No bridges. No rocks that stuck up to be used as stepping stones. No logs to clamber upon. Nothing. Only the water. And on that very island, it was bare except for a small building. A barren looking hut with a thatched roof and walls made from timber. The emerald was in there. Calling. Waiting.

Shadow tiptoed down the bank and looked closer at the water, feeling unsettled and worried. It felt - it looked like a trap. For he had see nothing like this before. And now he was painfully wishing that he had brought Sonic along with him. To help.

Pulling a face, Shadow stepped back and set his red eyes on the little hut that sat rather mockingly on the island. Shadow - of heavier build - could not dash across the water like Sonic could, he would sink. And the island was so small that braking just when you reached that inch of land was crucial. Otherwise you'd stop on the other side of the mote and sink.

Shadow rolled his eyes and knew he'd have to swim. "Well, I've got wet once already - so - whatever."

Yet it made him wonder who had put it in that hut. And why?

Sinking slowly into the shallows, feeling the cold, tenderized water lap at his fur and flesh, his feet touched the bottom. Not liking it one bit.

He walked forwards slowly, feeling his legs drag from under the surface. Long weeds felt along his thighs as he travelled, and sometimes he imagined them to be eels passing him by. Or water snakes.

And then he felt something else. Something worse. And it wasn't something slimy, eel-like or slithery like that of a snake passing from between his legs. It was a bite. Hard and vicious.

The pain leapt through the hedgehog and he screamed more from surprise. His body plunged into the water as he left the shallows and kicked out, hoping to frighten the creature responsible. He couldn't look into the water. It was too murky. And when he went under, his visibility was useless. The water was black and polluted.

Another snap of pain roiled up his side and this time he went to grab whatever it was before it swam away. He twirled in the water, snatching up for a breath like a tortured whale in distress. His hands caught on something - but it slid out from under his touch like soap. And was gone.

Little did he know that he struggles were only attracting more attention.

_Fuck you! _He would have icily shouted, but bubbles only escaped his mouth as he half swam, half fought through the water, not sure if he was attacking anything. He rolled his head up and stabbed through the black surface of the water. He wasn't far from the island now. It was retching up, closer and closer. He could see details in the hut now. It had a window. Empty of glass. An open door, banging in the wind. Its timber walls were threaded with cracks of age and weeds had sprouted all over it like rotten algae.

Something pinched into his upper leg. He felt the little teeth sinking in. Blood foamed up behind him, turning the black water into a misty scarlet.

Not caring now, Shadow plunged through the dark waters, breast stroking as quick as he could. He could spend all day and night in this mote fighting things that were impossible to see and catch. He may as well just sprint for the island. Only the bites were becoming quicker and more frequent. Little teeth snatched and tore into his fur like serpents. He grimaced at the pain, mind only set on the bank. The island. Nearing slowly. Too slowly.

Something jumped out of the water in front of him. It seemed to fly, darting forwards to grab his nose with its razor teeth. Its white eyes rolled in ecstasy. It was a fish. Shadow plunged into the water, head down so that the fish flew straight over him, snapping its devilish jaws as it went until - _plop - _it dived back into the waters. They looked like piranhas.

Shadow made it to the island. He hauled himself out, kicking his legs behind him as he crawled onto the sandy bank, hearing the fish snap and bite at his heels, clicking their teeth and plopping back into the water again after each leap to get a chunk of meat. Even now that Shadow was on land they weren't giving up, some even going as far as to land on the shore, snapping at the air as if hoping to get anything. So mad was their frenzy. Mad in hunger. Blindly plopping on the bank, only to die.

Shadow stood up, hurting all over. Droplets of blood dripped at his feet as he turned to see the fish dotted about the shore from where he had come up. Five of them lay in the sun, still flapping their great big jaws open for food. Their heads were hideously huge compared to their tiny bodies and minuscule fins.

Angry and hurt, Shadow proceeded straight to the cabin without even bothering with his bite marks. The lure of the emerald was just too much.

So he went in, regarding any more threats - anymore danger with amnesty. But he was safe this time. The cabin itself, its frame old, decaying wood, gone green with algae over the years, still stood. And within the darkness was a high pedestal revealing a deep, blue emerald. It shone like a dream. A gem of immaculate wonder. Shadow walked steadily forward and paused just before snapping it up. Before the glowing emerald, chalked in blue, were the words _inc hell _that had been carved into the stone pedestal. There was also a number - or a code. _00._

Also, as he looked on, a little confused now, the wall behind the pedestal marking the end of the cabin was a wall carpeted in birds. Birds that had been carved into the timber of the wall as if by magic. Their images swelled out in ruby and gold so that you could see their sharp, razor beaks in detail. Their stalk-like forms hovering over the emerald as if secretly guarding it. Watching it.

Shadow, barely raising his eyes at them, took the emerald but its glow died as soon as it fell into his touch and it turned a milky dark - just like the emerald one already in their possession.

The pedestal however lit up like a stark beacon and then died at once, smearing away the numbers and the odd letters. Gone. And the birds, ever vigilant on their wall, vanished as if they had never been there. The dark hedgehog stood still, expectantly awaiting something else to happen. But it didn't and he remained alone in the cabin. Alone with the second emerald.

Deciding to remember the odd codes displayed before they had disappeared, Shadow left the cabin and strutted out into daylight. The rain had moved on and now light, airy clouds full of pearly white, gleamed across the heavens like cotton. The sun smiled at him from the east. And the water at the bank burbled cruelly. The fish that had chased him up from the water still lay on the ground, but they had stopped flopping about like mad delinquents. They were all dead.

Shadow picked three of them up, thinking of roasting them later for dinner, and warped across the whole expanse of the mote to reach safety. The exertion caused him to drop to his knees once on land. It was hard to use his chaos abilities without the help of the emeralds.

_Why aren__'__t they working?_

Maybe their little chaos control had absorbed so much energy that it would take them longer to recover.

Shadow, on his feet, starting to sweat, gazed back at the lake surrounding the cabin and at the water that now seemed so still. As if all it contained were reeds, sludge and harmless fish.

* * *

><p>Sonic awoke after the storm at about the same time Shadow had risen from the mote while thirsty fish were snapping at his tail. The sun was warm and the plain seemed back to brimming with a harmonious green. Whatever this land - or planet was - Sonic didn't feel quite so bad about it now.<p>

He yawned, stretched and crawled out of his shelter to tuck into a few apples. Something black, at the edge of his vision, caught him off guard. Fur bristling along his tail and back, he peered upward at a lone hill overlooking the crop of stones they had chosen to shelter in less than twenty paces away. It stood watching him, on its lean four legs and devilish red eyes. The corners of its canines sticking out from its top lip.

A vanguard stood on the hill like a tall, black silhouette against the blinding sun. Alone. Out in full daylight like some waking horror. But it seemed to be looking _into _him rather than at him. And this made him freeze in fear.

_Shadow - where the hell are you?_

He blinked and looked at his shelter, wondering if he could slip in there quickly and slam the wooden door so that the wolf wouldn't be able to grab him. The branches forming the door however looked like brittle bones too weak to suffer even the gentlest bite. Let alone a full assault from a vanguard.

He looked back and up at the hill.

It was gone.

Frightened, he broke from his petrifaction and glanced to and fro, searching for it. But there was no darkness now. It had moved on, like the rain. Quickly and suddenly. The hill was empty. As if it had never even been there at all.

The little cobalt hedgehog rubbed his eyes and shook his head. "Must be seeing things -"

Still he discerned the hill every passing moment, expecting it to appear again. And he almost felt - like a premonition - that it would snare its jaws from behind him and sink its flashy white teeth into his neck.

The sun climbed to the west. And no vanguard ever came for him.

Shadow scrambled over the rocks and stones a little later, looking dusty and tired. Blood was still pouring thinly down his legs and rear from the fish at the mote and he dropped the blue emerald and the fish at Sonic's feet as if they were presents.

"Wah?" Sonic's jaw hung open as he bent to admire the blue emerald.

"Found it on a pedestal." Shadow began scratching through his fur to peer nonchalantly at his bite wounds. "It was in a cabin."

"A cabin? What for? Were there signs of someone living there?"

"No. The place was old. Cut off from this land by a mote full of these biting fish. I swam to the cabin while getting eaten by them."

Sonic nodded. "But the cabin must have been built by someone, right? Maybe the mote was free of fish before someone lived there!"

"Maybe."

"So, where is it then?"

"Several dozen miles out to the west. A long way, but I could still sense it. Still, when I grabbed the emerald - it became like our first. Dead and unresponsive."

Sonic looked dazed. Unconsciously he played with the ring on his wrist, "someone's playing with us. Out there."

"There is _no one _here!" Shadow stopped his grooming and fixed Sonic with his sharp, calculating eyes. "We are alone!"

"How can you be sure?" Sonic growled back, "we're both here, having been warped via chaos control, but that doesn't mean it's just the two of us! We saw those vanguard! And we have two emeralds! What was it doing in a cabin?"

"It doesn't matter!" Shadow barked in his face, "and arguing about it won't collect them any faster! We have to get them all! All seven will be enough to revert what I've done. And maybe answer all our sniveling little questions! You GOT THAT!"

"No need to shout!" Sonic said, muttering irefully, "I heard you the first time! It's just that - someone's here. Not with us presently, like a physical presence. But _here_, all the same!"

"I don't get you!" Shadow said, "I never did. Your lordship! Besides, you have to consider the emeralds! My power! We'll undo what we've done!"

"And then go back to the shattered castle in flames." The cobalt hedgehog ended for him, sighing heavily. "We'll be dying. You escaped it in the first place that led us here! Why would you want to go back to that?"

"I don't. I just -" But he couldn't finish. Didn't want to. He turned away, eyes downcast. His silence put a stop to the conversation. And Sonic wasn't about to object. Instead he turned to the fish and started organizing a fire to cook them with the apples he had collected earlier.

A grey afternoon slipped into a fiery evening that even the sun couldn't warm. Colors, burnt orange and amber, ribbed the sky over the hills of the alien world. Shadow clamped his fingers around his arm like a vice and shook him alert.

"Hedgehog! Look! Don't move! Look up and at the sun! Look!"

Sonic yawned despite the heavy urgency relaying from his partner's voice. "What?"

"Fool! Open your eyes and look!"

He tried to. The sun, though calm and meek at such a watery sunset, hurt eyes that had grown used to the darkness in sleep. As Shadow kept a firm grip on his arm, he focused his emerald eyes at the sun beyond. The light made his pupils constrict.

"There! Do you see? Do you see them now?"

Far ahead, on the tops of the trees with the sun as their background, stalked birds. Lots of them. Preening their white feathers and jostling for space. Their beaks were long with razor tips. Their legs long and delicate.

Not sure if they were real or not or if this was just another dream, Sonic regarded the trees on the sloping hills further away, the only other ones he could see from where he lay in the recess of the stones. They too were full of yawking birds.

"Shades?"

"They've only just appeared. As soon as the sun started to go down, they all came to the trees from the skies. Maybe they've come from another place. Maybe they're travelling like a migrating species."

"They look - dangerous."

"They aren't physically designed to be predators." Shadow stated wisely at his back, "I'd be worried if they looked like eagles. But they don't. Still, I suggest we rest here until daybreak."

"But the vanguard!" Sonic looked away from the birds and shuffled closer into the den that was now littered with apple cores and fish bones, "they'll catch us here! When nightfall comes, they'll know! And they'll find us! We've got to find somewhere else!"

Shadow nodded. "Where?"

"The mote! That cabin! We'll go there!"

"What if the vanguard can swim?"

"You said deadly fish swam in the mote! Perhaps they won't go near it, knowing that they'll be eaten if they try!"

"I know the idea seems tempting, but you've missed the point."

"Enlighten me, Shades." The evening light dappled over his elusive gold ring, turning the gold into blood.

"Getting there is one thing. Waiting for them to cross over is another. My energy is - low -" He closed his eyes briefly as if the confession hurt him, "a lot of my power caused the rip in chaos. And now that the emeralds are dead and I can't - feed from them - I won't be able to warp us across the mote. Not there and not the way back. And if those vanguard can swim, and don't mind a few bites, we'll be in a lot of trouble. And I don't particularly like dying in a cabin or being eaten alive in a dirty pond. We either make for the trees and find out if those birds welcome hedgehogs - or go for the next emerald. It might bring us an aegis better than any cabin."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Well, that'll be our next problem then, won't it?"

Sonic hung back, grinding his jaw tight. "There must be other ways. Like tight places in rocks or forests where the vanguards will be too big to get us."

"It would take us all the time we have left to look for such a place that may not even exist." Shadow bleakly returned.

Sonic peered up at the birds. The sun was sinking lower and lower. Like a time glass with the sands trickling away in vast, unstoppable quantities. In fact the sands of time had been trickling happily away all day. But now it was sinking faster and faster. The teeth of the vanguard felt so much closer.

"Maybe -" Sonic sounded much more afraid than he usually let on, "maybe the wolves won't come back at all. Maybe they weren't real. Or they've moved on. Like the birds. And when night comes, it'll still be just us. You - and me."

Shadow sighed. "I hope you're right. But you saying something about hiding in a tight place has given me an idea." With Sonic looking on, puzzled, Shadow rose to his feet amongst the bed of high, frowning stones and away from the den. "We dig. Make a warren that would make rabbits proud. We'll dig deep. So deep the vanguard won't know we'll be right under their feet! Then, at daybreak, we'll hunt for the next emerald. Which will bring our total count to three. And we'll use our hole as our safe zone every night."

"It may just work!" A little bit of jovial spirit lightened Sonic's otherwise heavy features. "How long do we have to do this?"

"Less than an hour."

They got straight to work. As the sun was fermenting its last goodbyes before it committed another journey round the globe, the two hedgehogs chose a spot in a small forest just a few miles from their Stone Den. Here the earth was more soft, more bouncy. And Sonic said that the earth deeper down in a forest would be warmer and dryer than out in the plains. And the tree roots supported a deeper, bigger structure. And now Sonic's support was really showing his colors. As a true hedgehog fashioned in every way, digging came naturally. Shadow stood back, arms pinned to his sides as he watched Sonic locate a preferable spot and then start his digging. Showering earth behind him like a dog. And hardly ever came up for breath.

_Yes, we will make the rabbits proud._

As Sonic did this, the black hedgehog covered their tracks and tried to confuse their scent as he laced through the trees, doubling back on himself and complicating their trail. Any wolf would find this hard to track. Even the exceptional ones would be hard pressed. And hungry wolves looking for easier kills would just loop off for something else to hunt.

The sun, just a slice off the top of the disk, furrowed up above the closer clouds in a foreboding ill of yellow. The hills were soaking it up. The stars were being mass produced up in the heavens in all their unfamiliar patterns. The birds, their cold silhouettes still pressed in the trees, motioned into stillness.

A long, hungry howl parried down the valley like a ghost calling to the living. And a horrible chill raced through Shadow's body, turning his blood ice cold.

"They're coming."

He zapped back to Sonic who had dug deeper than he could have hoped for. He couldn't even see him down in that hole.

"Sonic," he whispered, "I'm coming in."

Giving the dark forest one more look, he kicked back the mound of earth Sonic had made to disguise their work, and then picked up a large rock from a crop of purple mushrooms. The hole was positioned just at the foot of a small slop covered in trees that meshed in like wire. Proving a more successful cover. Here he sunk into the hole, flank first before chiseling the rock towards the entrance. Then he left it a few inches out to give them air before diving deeper into the burrow.


	5. Chapter 5 The Chase

**~ Fantasia Down: Darkness of Eternity ~**

By Dib07

Disclaimer: Sonic and Shadow belong to SEGA. This story is purely for fun. The idea however, is mine.

**Rating: T **

After a chaos control that seems to have split time and dimension, Shadow and Sonic find themselves in another world. A world where they are alone. Until the night falls. They must recollect the emeralds, survive and fight to find an answer. But when darkness comes, so do the vanguard. As black and as lethal as death herself. And after each emerald comes a new threat to tear down their lives.

Time is running out. Each trap gets more deadly. The riddles more complex. The darkness grows.

This new world is rotten with secrets.

* * *

><p><strong>Dib07: Thanks to An onymous, who I cannot emailPM personally to thank. Hope you enjoy the chapters henceforth. Though I like writing the stories, nothing gives me greater joy than other people enjoying them. Your reviews certainly feed me!**

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><p><strong>Chapter five : The Chase<strong>

'_Tis but a night, a long and moonless night!'_

_Death - Robert Blair_

The earth purred over his fur like a loose fitting garment. But as he crawled in deeper into a warm, close darkness, the soil around him seemed to press uncomfortably. Sonic had rushed on in his digging, not making the space larger for a bigger hedgehog. Still, Shadow pressed on, aware of the night at the entrance and the howl that replayed through his head over and over.

_Where do vanguard go during the daytime? Do they simply - vanish like demons? _No. That had to be impossible. He bit his lip and kept crawling, his ears soon touching across the low, stony ceiling so he had to keep them pressed flat against his head.

His hands clipped over a few nasty sharp stones. Luckily his gloves - now a shade dirtier - protected them for the most part. And he stumbled over a few tree roots, catching him completely by surprise.

With all this total darkness - he could not see anything. He had to rely completely on his other sensory organs. His brain told him that he was still making his way down. Deeper into the earth. The ground was still sloping. The darkness seemed all the more like a heavy blanket laden with metal.

_Sonic, isn__'__t this deep enough?_

He could smell him, not much further down the intestinal tunnel. Sweaty and scared.

"Sonic," he warned through the perpetual black, "calm down. It's all right. We're safe." He heard shuffling not far ahead. There was movements of earthworms all around him down here. It made his skin crawl. "Sonic?"

His smell was strong. "Shades, I have to go deeper."

"Why? We're deep enough. We're safe as it is."

"But I don't feel safe."

Shadow reached out and felt his wet fur. "Calm down. Nothing can get us down here except a few earthworms. Relax."

He heard a pining whine. After an uncertain pause, his replied, "okay, whatever. Shades, come closer."

He did and nudged against his much smaller body. Then, together they rested in the darkness. "Sonic, I never knew you could dig so fast."

He felt him nod against his shoulder. "Do you think they'll be able to hear us, from down here?"

"No. I doubt it. The tree roots will absorb any sounds. And the soil is still damp from during the daytime. No, we're quite cut off."

"Good." Shadow felt Sonic's muscles begin to go lax as the tension started to flood out.

"We should sleep." Shadow whispered. "We'll only exhaust ourselves with fright and the suspense if we don't."

"Okay." Purely platonic, or so it seemed, Sonic nestled into Shadow and began to doze into a dreamless nap. He twitched and jolted often, still highly strung. But soon, as time passed and nothing happened, he let himself go at last. Shadow, going against his own words, didn't sleep. He listened. And listened hard. He could hear the worms wriggling through the soil in their never ending search for food and reproduction. He could hear the leaves rustle on the surface as a gentle sigh of wind stirred them in the night. He could hear the grasshoppers lightly dancing and singing in the grass. He could hear the rhythmic creaks and moans of the forest trees.

Nothing that spoke of marauding wolves intent on finding them.

Shadow, cramped in a tight burrow where he had to sit with his legs pinched upwards in a U shape, with a blue hedgehog sleeping like an iron weight across his chest, he couldn't help but feel claustrophobic. Sometimes he forgot which way was the exit. Up or down? Left or right?

When he started to dose, he would jerk awake the same way Sonic was doing earlier, caught in a dream where a wolf was snapping at his legs in the burrow.

_We'll find a way out. We will._

The gloom, deep and holding, like a mother's womb from the underworld, held them tight. And Shadow let go of his sentry duties and fell headlong into his dreams.

* * *

><p>Shadow started up at once and woke on the floor of the burrow, breathing quickly. He thought he had been falling.<p>

He heard something. He strained with his ears, probing the darkness and the soil stifling for all their worth.

_It must still be dark out there -_

_Shouldn__'__t have fallen asleep -_

_Lost track of time -_

There it was again. Scraping. Digging.

Digging?

He could hear tender claws running through soft earth. Could hear quiet grunts of exertion. Shadow held his breath as a cold, chilling panic slowly but surely clasped him into a tighter darkness worse than any deep hole could provide.

Shit!

Faster now. Claws raping the earth. Snouts sniffing at their hole. Far away - but gaining distance - all the time.

"Sonic! Sonic!" He shook him roughly and regretted startling him. The blue blur scurried around the burrow for a moment, completely forgetting how and why he had ended up here. Then memory and sanity hit him like a brick and he collapsed by Shadow's hot warmth.

"What's wrong? Wah -"

Shadow hissed at him, "listen! They're coming! They're tearing down our hole! _We _have to leave!"

"No! No!" Sonic cried, "they can't! Do you know how deep we are? It'll take them days, dude!"

"Not at their rate it won't! Move!"

Sonic crawled up against the dead end. Even he too could now begin to hear the horror that was after them. Chiseling their way deeper like giant hares. Bloodthirsty hares.

"It can't be the vanguard! It can't!"

"DIG!"

Together they both started digging. It was no use going deeper. The air would get too low. And the earth might suddenly crumble and bury them. The roots could only support burrows so deep. So their best chances were to dig upwards and away from the scratching. To escape and run someplace else.

As Sonic dug for a way forward, Shadow covered their retreat by blocking the entrance with soil. It wouldn't barricade anything, but it might at least buy them some extra time.

"Shades, they can't!" Sonic yelped from his far end, "they're wolves! They _can__'__t _get us down here!"

"A pack that's strong and determined enough can." Shadow vehemently replied, "and they aren't ordinary wolves. We have to get out!"

_They__'__re demons. Curses that walk the earth after the living. Their eyes make me freeze in fear of them._

Sonic dug as fast as he could but he was short of breath and now tired from rooting up a burrow from sunset. Shadow crawled up to him and continued his job without a word of consent.

The digging above them was pressing quickly. The claws were raking in like forks and spades. So quick a normal creature wouldn't have the energy to uphold such an assault.

Pressing upward now, the fear clotting up and up, Shadow broke through the surface and was met by a deep, velvet night. Still wickedly young and sharp in her wits. A slender moon moved gapingly before the trees like a molten wax ball. And the stars affronted his gaze like millions of little faces watching. Like an anticipated audience. Watching for the chase.

Shadow pushed himself out the tight hole, not bothering to widen it - he didn't have time. Then he turned and helped Sonic out who slipped through easily and kept the hold on Sonic's hand. Through the air that felt fresh and fair against their hot, muddy faces, they ran. Through the thicket. Past old, shriveled trees that discerned them with reproach. The patter of wolves behind them. Teeth glowing gaily like the moon. Watching like the stars. They came. Eyes hounding towards them like flying madness.

Shadow glanced behind them and saw hundreds of red glitters reflect back at him. There was more now. Lots more.

_Why do they want us - so badly?_

"Shades - hold tight -"

"What? Sonic, don't!"

Trading places. The leader pulling on the weak now became the weak pulling the leader. Sonic found some kind of new strength. His reserves maybe out of all his fear, and rode out, pressing through the long, lean grass whilst tugging Shadow behind like an iron ball. His rekindled speed sent them rocketing from the forest and across plains so quickly Shadow lost complete track of where they were. The stars reeled above them like something from a deranged rodeo. The moon rolled in circles like a snowflake.

"Sonic!"

The blue blur charged on regardless. Eyes locked to the dark horizon. Red eyes glistened across the hills they were heading for. A dozen perhaps, heading straight for them. Sonic zapped to the left in perfect motion but Shadow felt the whiplash as he was whipped in the new direction.

_Fuck!_

"Sonic! Concentrate on hiding! We can't run forever! You can't!" Right now the little blue hedgehog was consumed by fear and panic alone. Allowing his instincts to churn at a run and the usual sensation of total and safe evacuation wasn't working. But too petrified to think of another way, Sonic lent into what he had always known to get him out of trouble before. Even if it looked bleak.

"Fool! Take a left!"

Sonic listened and did. He sharply banked, almost hitting the ground with his knees and jolting Shadow after him like a doll. Shadow grimaced against his newly throbbing headache and hurting arm.

"Go up over the hill."

There were more eyes dead ahead. They were close enough to see the wolves' midnight bodies streak across the green valleys like venomous shadows. White teeth mowed towards them like verbal threats.

"Take a right."

He braced himself against another turn. It was hurting worse. Sonic was braking and turning so fast - so precisely.

"Where are we going?" Sonic shouted against the wind, his sneakers drumming hard over the ground.

"To the next emerald. It's our only chance."

"How far?"

"Not much further! Just keep going straight on! You should see something! A temple a building -"

"It's dark!" Sonic yelled back, voice pitched in fright.

"I know it is! Just keep fucking going! My anger will be worse than a thousand vanguard if you don't bloody listen!"

* * *

><p>TBC<p>

Please review! Thanks sooo much for reading!


	6. Chapter 6 The Third Emerald

**~ Fantasia Down: Darkness of Eternity ~**

By Dib07

Disclaimer: Sonic and Shadow belong to SEGA. This story is purely for fun. The idea however, is mine.

**Rating: T **

After a chaos control that seems to have split time and dimension, Shadow and Sonic find themselves in another world. A world where they are alone. Until the night falls. They must recollect the emeralds, survive and fight to find an answer. But when darkness comes, so do the vanguard. As black and as lethal as death herself. And after each emerald comes a new threat to tear down their lives.

Time is running out. Each trap gets more deadly. The riddles more complex. The darkness grows.

This new world is rotten with secrets.

* * *

><p><strong>Dib07:<strong> I just had to update, because the reviews I have been getting have been awe-inspiring! I can't leave you guys hanging, so here's the next chapter in an early instalment! I have tried to thank/email everyone personally, the support has been awesome!

To: **An onymous **

Dude, you have made me very happy with your review, (you always do) and so glad I am meeting your expectations and more! Hahaha! So glad you love the description, because I was actually planning on downsizing the descriptive work because I thought it might be too much to read for people that don't have the time. Plus it can be a bit much, so I'm still rethinking it. Again you have got my characters down to a T, you know me too well already! Wish I had your brain! Maybe Sonic is too animalistic for some people, but I admire him as an instinctive creature who strives for justice but he is also not perfect whereas Shadow is like a teacher/protective adult who is far more human, if I can even class him as that.

Well, here's the next chapter! You've been great! And I hope with these chapters to come, I will continue to impress you. It's is my aim, after all!

**Twilight The Wolf:**

I hope you are enjoying these chapters too! Let me know what you think!

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter six : The Third Emerald<strong>

'"_Why not remove it from its lurking place?"_

'_Twas done as soon as said; but on the way_

_It burst - it fell; and lo! A skeleton;_

_And here and there a pearl, an emerald stone.__'_

_Ginevra - Samuel Rogers_

* * *

><p>The cold winds drilled upon them like needles. The rush of vanguard feet at their tails could make even the greatest warrior crack. The night, unmerciful despite all her wild, limitless beauty, watched on.<p>

The pull of the emerald was now much greater. Its beckoning call, warm and inviting, lashed away the hurt of Shadow's pain. _Keep going, hedgehog. _He mentally jibbed into Sonic just in case he could feel his scathing worry. His whip of mental discipline. Sonic was one that hardly disappointed. As if he had been listening his speed increased as they flushed through meadows at eye watering speeds. True to form, a house bobbed up in the horizon. It was triangular and sharp against the dark, unwelcome scenery of this strange, brutal world that they had somehow immersed themselves in.

Shadow preened round to see the vanguards losing their pace. They were slipping back, further and further. Sonic's speed had proved their fortunate escape so far. If there wasn't anymore wolves waiting for them _in _the house of course. Or whatever the hell it was.

At the sight of the house, Sonic accelerated over 400 miles per hour. The scenery couldn't even be seen - nor could it keep up. It was just a blur. But Sonic was sweating. His droplets of perspiration dotted against Shadow like rainwater. Sonic didn't normally sweat. Though he hadn't pulled off this kind of speed in a while.

_Sonic, slow down. They are far behind us._

The house loomed closer. It sat squarely between the rising hills like a crouching monster.

Amazingly, or by pure coincidence, Sonic slowed radically. The whistling keen wind, happy to cut into them like daggers, now felt smooth and soft against their fur. And Shadow didn't feel like his ears were about to be snapped off anymore.

At last Sonic braked before the overlooking house.

Shadow looked round and saw them. Hundreds of red eyes gazing hungrily at them around the house in slobbery greed. Teeth grinning white. They were but twenty paces away. But for some reason, none of them were approaching any closer than that. They all stood, side by side. Not even worn or breathless from all that running.

"Sonic, look!"

The cobalt did, surprised himself. He shivered. "What are they doing? What do they want? Are they - are they savoring the moment before our deaths?"

Shadow grunted and walked forwards a little towards one of them in the crowd stretching around the house like a black, furry fence in single file. As the hedgehog approached, they started to snarl. Bite and jibe in the air like excited dogs. Their claws scratched and bit into the ground, leaving long furrows. It was as if they had hit an invisible line. And could not cross it.

_Maybe it__'__s the power of the emerald?_

"Fuck you!" Shadow roared as close to them as he dared, watching them just in case they were playing a trick. Just in case they were playing for keeps. But they didn't come at him. They spat and growled. But never crossed that line. "You aren't wolves! Are you?" He bellowed back, "you're something else! I know! So bloody tell me!"

The moon glided up over the silver clouds. Its fragile light poured over the faces of the vanguard. Their blood eyes seemed to peel out of their sockets in dead madness. Their long, narrow ears of jet black stood tall and proud on their skulls. Their grinning teeth gleaned like icicles.

"Can the emerald be really holding them back?"

Shadow took his arm and started leading him up to the tall building. "We'll ask them later when we've got time. Come on!"

The house was nothing special. In fact it was about as dark and as drab as the cabin Shadow had briefly set foot in. The front was pillared that upheld an extended roof that was roped with algae and ivy. There was no door. Only an open doorway entry beyond the three stone steps welcoming them inside. Sonic did not like any of it. "It's like an overlander built it or something! I can't go in there!"

"Yes you can. I'm not arguing. Either that or you can stay out here for the wolves. I'm sure they're so hungry even a thin, bony hedgehog would be tasty."

Sonic snorted angrily and went in, brow creased. Ears swiveling madly for any strange noise. The air was stale and grimy. Dust had gathered on the carpet that had been splayed out on the main and only room. A mantle, bare except for one little statue, observed them from its perch. The statue appeared to be made out of metal. Its image looked faintly like that of a man but it was so lumpy and bent that it could have been an ape.

A singular table greeted them against the far wall at the end of the dusty carpet. So dusty you couldn't even tell its original color. And there, shining robustly from the filth that had once been a possible home, on the table was the red chaos emerald.

Sonic was too busy looking morbidly at a portrait painting of a vanguard beside the dusty mantle. Its eyes seemed to gleam out as if they were real. And though the art looked painted and modeled to suit the subject, it looked so evil and out of place. As if some wizard had frozen a real wolf inside the frame.

"Shades - I've got a real bad feeling -"

"Hush!" The elder grated, reaching for the emerald with Sonic tiptoeing lightly behind him, "this is easier than scratching my back."

As soon as he went to grab the emerald, a trap door opened under their feet and together they went flying down into an abyss.

"SHADES!" Sonic tried to grab hold of something - anything, but they were going down too fast.

Shadow kept his balance, even in the air and prepared for the landing.

The chute wasn't every wide or long and after a few more throaty screams they hit the dusty floor, coughing. Shadow picked himself up and glanced around. Pillars of rocks glided into motion at once, towering so high they acted like concrete slabs of wall.

"Sonic! Get up!"

But before he could do or say anything else, a slab of wall came between them, cutting them off.

At once Sonic slapped himself against the wall that had so cruelly yanked him away from his rock of sanity.

"Shades! How do we get out?"

The walls were moving continually. Closing Shadow in so that he had nothing but a square room. The space wasn't tight, enough to pace in. But he was alone. And Sonic's shouts were muffled by inches of pure solid rock.

On the floor were four colored panels. Each one situated in the corner of his single allotted chamber. Now the heave and grumble of the jarring rocks were over and he looked at the colors idly, able to think. One was red. The other three were yellow, blue and green.

"Shadow!" He heard dull, heavy thuds banging against the far wall. The hedgehog was hurling himself at the rock, trying to force a way through.

"Sonic!" Shadow cried angrily, "stop what you are doing! These walls won't break! So save your energy!"

The banging stopped.

Shadow, curious, pressed on the red panel with his boot. _The chaos emerald is red - so -_

At once the walls moved and interlaced again, shifting a new pattern. Sonic yelped and moved back, seeing Shadow's face revealed in a gap just before it closed again. Still, Sonic ran at the gap and hit a yellow panel. A flurry of arrows opened up from the floor from tiny holes that opened in the stone and jettisoned upwards at the ceiling, spearing anything in the way. Shadow was also caught in the trap and howled in surprise when three arrows clipped his arms, flank and left ear.

"Sonic, what did you do?"

"I - I don't know!" He coughed from a further distance. His voice was fainter. "The arrows - I touched a yellow panel -"

"Are you hurt?"

"No -"

The arrows clattered back to the floor, many bent or broken from their clash with the ceiling.

The rocks rotated a final time until they fell into silence. And they were still trapped.

They had moved three times. Shadow looked at the panels presented. They were still the same colors but in different corners of the chamber since before. He wasn't sure that touching red again would work.

This was obviously all a trap. But this trap seemed to have codes. A built in way to get out of it. And that meant that there was indeed a way out.

"Sonic, can you see panels where you are?" He listened for an answer. He didn't get one. Sonic must have been forced further away.

_Gah! We must be underground. Beneath the house. What if we don__'__t make it out?_

_And who made these traps?_

The vanguard could not build. They didn't have the body stature. Neither the experience. There had to be someone else at work.

Looking at the panels, red to blue, yellow to green, he felt sweat roll down his armpits. _What__'__s the first color of the rainbow? Would that work? Or maybe it__'__s blue? The color of the last chaos emerald we obtained? The first color of the rainbow is red. Then yellow, green and blue. But Sonic touched the yellow one. Fuck the rainbow. So blue it is._

He hit the blue panel. A second wave of arrows opened up from the floor panels again, skimming through fur and flesh. Shadow stepped aside from as many as he could but their exits covered the whole floor. No escape. And like wooden rain, they came down again, landing heavily. Heads of stone glaring hotly from the smooth stone.

Shadow grit his teeth and rubbed a deep cut down the length of his arm where an arrow had skewered it going up. The panels were obviously connected by coils and springs. Old mechanisms that were set off when touched. Like switches of buttons. Once all the devices were set, you had a trap.

_So what if I press them, altogether?_

"Sonic," he bellowed into the stone walls harboring him in like a caged animal, "I think I know what we have to do!" _Prepare for the worst if I don__'__t. _"We need to touch all of the colored panels at once!"

_How, don__'__t ask me how!_

There was no answer. But Shadow got a feeling, a primal feeling, that he had heard him.

"Okay! Now, Sonic!" Flicking his index finger up, a bulb of chaos energy flashed on the tip of his finger in golden light. It was weak and tiny. He could not access any emerald power. Even the glowing one they had yet to obtain. It was as if they belonged to another calling. Someone who had grasped them first. And they would not listen to him. He wasn't their master.

Squeezing such a power from his reserves made him light headed. He tried not to let it faze him.

Looking at the closet panel, blue, he darted the energy bolt at it and it rebounded after hitting the panel to the green one. Then the yellow and lastly the red. It fizzled out before it reached back to Shadow. And then the panels glowed. A warm, vibrant glow that made him shield his eyes against it.

The walls gave way as if some ancient mechanism was coaching them back into sleep. Back into their packages. They slid away, moving so fast for things so immensely tall and heavy. Then they all fell against an even larger chamber and stood at a rest. Each thick panel facing sideways like a domino game. Surrounding him. And the panels dimmed and turned red. A door on the far side, hidden before in the stone, now hung open. Its innards were as black as midnight.

_Have I? Have I done it?_

Sonic sat dazed on the open stone floor, looking bleak and dazed, as if Sally had just dumped him for a forerunner. His chin and hand was cut. But that was all, and Shadow heaved a long sigh of blissful relief.

"Come on." He said, striding up to him in total confidence. "The door is open. We can move on."

"I - I - I saw -"

"Saw what?"

Sonic shook his head and stood up. His clouded eyes crinkled back into life, but he gazed about the solemn room in agitation. As if he had lost something. "I'm not so sure now -"

"We don't have time for this. That door might close on us and if it does, there's no other way out. Come on."

They plodded out the chamber and through the door. It snapped shut behind them and they felt as if they had been thrown into the open maws of yet another trap. In darkness.

Shadow felt around him, making out that they were in a tight, narrow corridor. And the walls were littered in iron holders that held charcoal logs.

Regretfully using more of his chaos energy he knew he couldn't spare, Shadow lit one of the charcoal beams and pulled it out of its holder. Its light coned them away from the darkness and hemmed their way onwards. Down the steps from the door and down into another corridor.

"I did like you said. I pressed all of them at once." Sonic said lightly.

"How?"

"I ran really fast! And I guess it worked. How did you know it would?"

"A guess." The soft cadence of his voice bathed the dingy long chamber in titters of echoes. "I think the panels were a trick. They didn't really mean anything. What someone wanted was to make us do the impossible and press all eight at once. Unlocking the trap. What they didn't expect," he paused and looked into tired, anxious emerald eyes, "was us."

Sonic's fur looked unhealthy and pale in the gleam of the fire light. And his eyelids sagged as he peered down at his sneakers in doubt. "What if they're watching us? What if they're trying to kill us?"

"These traps could be over a hundred years old." Shadow modestly reasoned with a grim nod of self acknowledgment, "maybe they were built during a war or a personal conflict and made these for any trespassers. Enemies. Whatever. And they killed themselves in the end. Either that or the vanguard bred out of control and slaughtered them. Who knows, Sonic? But you mustn't insist that these traps are meant for us! Anyone can fall into them! Like the flesh-eating fish at the cabin! That was all just _there! _Like this house! Inactivated for decades! Until we come along! Like strangers!"

"Like a mouse to the cheese in the trap." Sonic put pithily. "I don't believe you. Someone or something is playing with us! And you forget that ordinary traps don't repel demon vanguard! Or else the occupants of this world would still be here!"

Shadow rolled his eyes. Like the disagreeable parent he always seemed to be. "I don't get you sometimes. You're supposed to be the optimist! The positive thinker!"

Sonic snarled in the burning fire light, "I don't need your psychiatric report. I'm just thinking ahead. Someone has to, that's all."

Shadow clutched his log tighter, aware of the flame burning away on its head. The light wouldn't last. "Let's go."

They proceeded on in silence in case Sonic was right and an enemy responsible for the traps would be round a corner, waiting to ambush them. But at each turn down this long and winding corridor, they were quite alone.

And the place smelt old and disused. Old stones that cropped the walls and ceiling opened out into an archway as if built under the influence of a senescent imagination.

After a few more minutes of walking through the bleak darkness, their light protecting them like a thin shield of visibility, they came to another door. This one was sealed and bolted closed. To the left of the door was an old golden dial. Dirty with the grim and dust of time. Shadow wiped the grease and filth away to reveal words written or encoded on the dial. And it was in the old overlander language, which made Sonic bite the inside of his lip.

Shadow read it out loud so that his thin, shivering comrade could understand; "_What doth makes us run, Maketh our world undone_."

"Sounds like a riddle."

"Ah huh." Shadow looked about the door, quizzing it silently. But there were no clues. He turned back around and only the dark throat of the corridor looked back at him.

Sonic tried the bolt. But it wouldn't budge. "We could try breaking it down."

"No go. It's thick steel. Toughest metal on all of Mobius. And no quills or claws from any creature, let alone a hedgehog, can tear it down."

Sonic eyed him darkly. "Then there must be some other way! The riddle doesn't make sense! And even if it did, who do we speak the answer to? The door?"

"Stop panicking!"

"I'm not!" He returned sulkily, teeth drawn back. Muzzle shiny with perspiration. "I just can't stand being underground! Trapped! And played with! These traps feel like tests!"

"And who do ya think is testing us?" Shadow spat, utterly fed up with Sonic, having withstood much of his moods until now, "the gods themselves?"

"Aliens maybe!"

Shadow growled and turned to the dial. "Chaos!" He spoke closely at the metal, "power! Humans!"

Nothing.

'_What doth makes us run, Maketh our world undone.__'_

Shadow looked at his billowing torch that creamed the walls and ceiling around them in a distinctive orange light. "Fire." He said.

"What?"

"Fire. Water or earth can't be the answer. We may run from water, but it doesn't undo the world. But fire does." With this in mind, he bowed the head of his log down on the golden disk and let the sultry flames run along its tip before rising it back up. The dial brightened. The cogs somewhere within the door started to turn. Slowly and surely, the thick door swung open as if by the helpful hands of a ghost. And the next room was accessible to them.

* * *

><p><strong>Dib07:<strong> The action will gear up big time very shortly, so sorry if you still feel like it might be too slow. It's like playing chess. All the pieces will make their move!

Thanks again for the support. You keep me going!


	7. Chapter 7 Gawks

**~ Fantasia Down: Darkness of Eternity ~**

By Dib07

Disclaimer: Sonic and Shadow belong to SEGA. This story is purely for fun. The idea however, is mine.

**Rating: T **

After a chaos control that seems to have split time and dimension, Shadow and Sonic find themselves in another world. A world where they are alone. Until the night falls. They must recollect the emeralds, survive and fight to find an answer. But when darkness comes, so do the vanguard. As black and as lethal as death herself. And after each emerald comes a new threat to tear down their lives.

Time is running out. Each trap gets more deadly. The riddles more complex. The darkness grows.

This new world is rotten with secrets.

* * *

><p>Dib07: Another chapter = more confusion! But stay with me! And yes, a tiny bit of a warning because there is a mention of Sonic angst in this one and more in future. All reviewers have been thanked via PM or on previous pages. If not, I do apoligize. All I can say is, enjoy!<p>

**Chapter seven : Gawks**

'_I think it is the weakness of mine eyes _

_That shape this monstrous apparition._

_It comes upon me. Art thou anything?_

_Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil,_

_That makest my blood cold, and my hair to stare?__'_

_The Eve of Philippi - Shakespeare_

A million and one different things were rushing and colliding in Sonic's mind. First traps and now riddles? And the riddles were written in the old overlander language. Not in alien codes. But overlander. What was that doing here for?

He kept astride with Shadow, determined to figure it all out. Determined to uncover the answer. No matter how ugly it was.

The room was well lit and Shadow carelessly dropped his torch and let it burn itself out on the cold stone floor.

Presented to them like a gift, a gift of victory, sat the glowing red emerald yet again. Welcoming them back into its presence like an old friend. It sat on the same brown table as before. Alone and sitting on a small pedestal that held it in place with a stone cup. They approached it wearily and Shadow saw the panel below the cup reading a fragmented word and two more numbers.

'Cold. 23.'

"What does that mean?" Sonic pressed close to it and ran his finger over the dusty surface.

"There was something else exactly like this back at the cabin in the middle of the mote." Shadow explained tersely, "it said, i n c hell and the numbers were two zeros. I'm confused about it as much as you are, so I suggest we remember them. They may amount to an even bigger riddle later. Or a code to give us the answers."

Sonic stepped back. "Whoever has done this - it's so well thought of -"

"Looks that way." He ended cryptically before taking the emerald. This time the room, or the very fabric of the world, allowed him to hold it. Their prize for surviving. When he had, a little wooden door creaked open on their left and this time Sonic pushed it open to reveal the landscape waiting for them outside. It was a drab, decaying night. They were standing in the doorway of the house they had seen first when coming here. And the ring of vanguard had eerily disappeared.

A brave sun winked over the mountains.

Dawn.

Sonic felt so pleased to finally see it at last.

They stumbled out, feeling dusty and covered in the dark secrets of a house that looked normal against the first tendrils of morning. The roof, seemingly disjointed to look like a spire, stood out green with plant life. The sides, made of stone, brimmed out in modest innocence as if nothing dark and abhorrent lingered within.

He found himself thinking; _is every emerald going to be like this? A treasure hunt? And what if one of the traps offers no way out?_

"Sonic," Shadow tossed the red emerald gaily in his hands, absorbing his hard won victory, "now that it's daylight, we should eat and rest before hunting for the next one in the afternoon."

"Sounds good to me."

* * *

><p>They raced away from the house when the full staunch of daylight encouraged them of no more vanguard. And the house gave them a sense of unpleasant danger. Fear and pain. So they abandoned it, hoping to never face it again.<p>

On their way as they took a more leisurely pace to the Stone Den, they spotted squat buildings posted in an area with smoke blowing harmoniously from little stone chimneys.

They jumped into the tall grass in a bank overlooking what appeared to be a village. A village they must have passed and not noticed.

The two of them, pressed close to the ground and spying through the long vegetation, watched in fascination as creatures, hardly the shape and form of people, interlaced the small village of about a dozen scrawny thatched houses, jibbing in odd, alien tongues and lumbering around like crocodiles on two legs. They wore the skins of other animals. The black pelt of a vanguard shouldered the torso of one. Others wore bear and deer skins.

"They walk like overlanders," Shadow was whispering as they pressed their bodies close to the soil, "but look at them! They're so ugly and malformed!"

Looking straight ahead, one of them bent closer to where they were crouching to pick up a log of wood. It did look vaguely human. It had a pointed, fat chin that angled out from the rest of its face. Its teeth curved outward from its lips as if they were too many for the mouth to cope with. Its eyes were yellow and tiny. Angry and dumb looking. Their limbs were long and hairy. But like overlanders they didn't have fur - but fleshy skin and hairy heads. On their feet were wore shoes. And some of them carried clubs.

"Can you see any females?" Sonic nudged beside him. He looked scared.

"No. Not one."

"Do we... do we need to go... urm... see t-them?"

"They might have an answer. Maybe these things are the ones making the traps? And hiding the emeralds?" Shadow rose a little and sat up, his black and red quills rising out of the grass like a cobra. "Why did we not see them earlier? Wouldn't the vanguard kill them all?"

"Maybe not. Let's get away from here. Now, please!"

"No."

They remained hidden to further assess whether these primitive 'humans' were a threat. A danger to them. Stealthy they circled the village and scented the abhorring smell of meat cooking over a fire. Shadow saw one of those great white birds dead on a bench, its mouth hung open in a silent cry. Flies harvesting it for food and a nest for their eggs.

Mallets and clubs were the only weapons they could discern. Some of them sat propped up against tables or the walls outside their homes. Some of these tall creatures walked in pairs. Others alone. And they periodically left the village. Shadow assumed that it was because they were hunting.

"This confirms the theory that we're in Mobius' past." Shadow stated while they now crouched behind an old wooden shack, closer to the centre of the village, "the vanguard. The birds. Nothing has evolved yet like we have. And what we are seeing at the moment are primitive humans. The early settlers of Robotnik's ancestors."

"So we time travelled?"

"Correct. So perhaps we can try to communicate with them?"

"What for?"

Shadow shrugged. "We need protection from the vanguard. If we are chased every night, we'll be driven by fear and exhaustion. And pretty soon we won't have enough energy to gather all seven emeralds. And maybe these forerunners can provide us with food. Shelter. We need it."

At this, Sonic left the grass and walked away. Infuriated, but not surprised, Shadow followed him.

The blue hedgehog sat by a small pool of water, his reflection gazing sadly back at him. The wounds along his arm, stomach and back would heal into scars. But the scars on the inside would remain ever sharp and fresh.

Shadow sat close to him. "Want to talk about it?"

"No, thank you."

"You never have. Come on, it's over now. They can't hurt you anymore. Maybe I can help somehow."

"It's fine. It's okay. Just give me a moment before I face those… creatures."

"Did they… use a knife?" It sure looked like they had. He looked down at Sonic's stomach, the worst of the wounds that had tried to heal. The fur had tried to regrow over the old wound, making the line even more prominent. On that day, Sonic came to the overlanders only to help them. What they had done was set a trap. And it hadn't even been for him. The overlanders had been uprising for quite some time, fighting amongst themselves and injuring their own children. Turned out they had collected most or all of the emeralds in this one castle. And Sonic… Trapped for days and nights... without being fed and to the mercy of their...

"Let's go." The blue hedgehog rose and turned away from Shadow's prying eyes. "We're wasting time."

Together they walked out towards the village as planned, side by side, feeling very small and vulnerable. The first monstrous overlander to sight them was a hairy, bearded giant who had been busy kneeling on the grass sharpening his flint tools with a stone. His tiny, yellow eyes seemed to swell in anger at their approach and stood up, its shaggy hair blowing in the wind. Sonic halted at once and saw fleas bouncing up and down upon the man's boisterous frame. And they stank. Of grease, sweat and urine.

"Hi," he said, "my name is Sonic!" He pointed at his chest and then turned his gaze to his comrade. "This is Shad - ow! My friend! We are friends! We come in peace!"

Another hairy forerunner lumbered into the scene carting a tree branch on his shoulder. His eyes were as sickly yellow as the first and he was soon joined by two more. All of them had either burgundy or ginger hair that swept down their dirty, meaty necks like greasy weeds.

"Olleh elttil seno!" The one with the tools in his hand said, opening his mouth as he spoke to reveal the sharp incisors in that fat, blubbery maw. "gawk era ew!"

Shadow narrowed his red eyes. "I can't understand them."

Several more of these tall, pink, hairy things surrounded them, looking on curiously. But the ones holding the clubs looked menacing.

"We came from another world." Shadow tried to explain slowly, "we are hedge hogs! Animals! That can talk! We need food! And water!"

Sonic pretended to eat something in the air, then rubbed his stomach afterwards to exaggerate Shadow's point. But the grim bunch of villagers looked on, mercilessly clueless. And their angry expressions remained unchanged.

"I don't think this is working." Sonic whispered unhappily, "why are they looking at us - like that?"

"Well, I suppose we are aliens considering the circumstances." Shadow replied, unfazed. "But they aren't attacking. Let's go to their tavern and ignore them for now. I'm fucking hungry."

Sonic looked at him wildly. "Well, this is going to be interesting, buddy."

Shadow smiled confidently. Savagely carefree. "I don't care what they do. Look at them. They're dumb, primitive people. They might even think of us as gods."

"I doubt that."

Meandering through the truculent onlookers, they walked slowly and carefully down a worn track up to the tavern. It was the largest shack in the town and the air whispering out of it foretold of food and water.

Sonic gulped as he passed under the shadows of the people here. So where were the children? The mothers? The wives?

He got a very bad feeling.

One in particular with hoary red hair eyed him dangerously at the door of the tavern. Around his neck was a pendent made of little bones from the spine of an animal.

The inside of the tavern was warm and dark. On the tables were bright candles. Slabs of honey in stone pots were lined up at the back bench of the bar behind a big fat man chopping up herbs. Grimy meat sat, pestered with flies on stone or wooden plates before feeding occupants. But only five ate and drank here. The rest appeared to be outside, either working or hunting.

Sonic and Shadow stood at the bar with every intention of ordering food like they would have done back at home. The bartender, with bloody furred clothes and a scowl on his sweaty face, eyed them darkly from his herbs.

"Hello." Shadow suddenly felt like laughing in the face of the whole situation. It all seemed like a joke out of someone's mad dream. And he certainly hoped that it wasn't one of his. "We are hungry. _Hunnngrry. _We want food. In our mouths." Acting like he was communicating with a dumb little creature, he opened his mouth and pointed his finger towards it. Then he gestured at the empty stone cups standing like useless plant vases on the bar. "We thirsty. Want drink."

"Gawks etah uoy."

"They say gawk an awful lot." Shadow observed, cropping his chin against the palm of his hand in fatigue. "Maybe we should call them Gawks. We've got to name them something."

The Gawk in question turned to his pots of honey (what seemed to be his small pantry) and dished out a glob of it onto a plate. He then offered it to them in confusion. But his yellow eyes remained in the mood of aggression.

"No. Food. Like grapes or herbs. Honey - no good." Sonic shook his head and waved his arms in front of the plate. The gawk set it down and turned to something else.

Shadow drummed his fingers on the wood of the thick, darkened bar, eyelids low. Stomach growling. Sonic felt like nudging him to cheer him up. He felt much better. Less worried and more concerned about the next adventure. These people had brought some normality back to him. It made this world more balanced. More real. And if they were in the past, it made a lot more sense. And made going back home again hopefully easier.

His next mistake was looking back over at the door. The only way in and out.

All the villagers seemed to be there. Most that could fit standing silently in the doorway, yellow eyes peeling angrily out at them in their fascinated abhorrence of them. Many more, too crowded to fit, stayed in a line or cluster outside, looking in at them through the windows. Watching. Just staring. Nothing else. And they blocked the way out for them.

Sonic gazed fearfully at the other five who had been sitting at the tables when they had come in, quietly chewing their meat. They too sat stiff and ridged. Some had turned in their seats. To stare. With those same yellow eyes. And their rancid meat sat cold and untouched on their plates.

"Shades -" He turned back. The gawk behind the bar had offered them one cup each of something red. But it didn't smell of wine. "Shades -!"

"What?" The Ultimate Life Form grated, reaching out and grabbing his cup, ignorant to the sudden change. "Stop bitching and drink! This is what we came for, wasn't it?" He peered vengefully up at the staring bartender. "What the fuck you staring at? You heard the hedgehog! Food dammit!" With a flick of his wrist he began to gulp down from the cup. Then disgust and shock grimaced his countenance and he chucked the cup on the floor, hearing it smash into a hundred pieces. "Gah!" He spat convulsively and then ran a hand over his mouth while his stomach heaved in nausea.

"Shades! What is it?"

"Fuck me! It's blood! The stuff in the cups! It's all blood!"

The gawk shoved a plate of food before them before they could react. Sonic went white. What stared back at them was the huge, heavy head of the vanguard on the plate. Its white open teeth that looked too heavy for its form, bleached out. While its red eyes seemed to poison them from where they stood.

"Let's get out of here!"

They turned to face the gawks marching from the doorway, hands outstretched, ready to crush them. Others wielded maces or clubs. And they bumbled in like fleshly, towering statues. There was too many of them. Their thick bodies made the exit impassable and they closed in like moving, hot walls of hair and stink. Fleas and flies whirled round their greasy hides like weltering disease.

Sonic gasped and backed into a stone chair.

Shadow looked to the windows. "Follow me!" He shouted, then dived towards their only escape. At that the gawks charged.

Shadow went flying through the open window and landed gracefully on the sweet smelling grass outside. Sonic tumbled beside him.

They got up and ran just as the gawks began to thrash out of the tavern, their very anger seeming to fume over their heads like wavering heat.

Since the gawks seemed to be slow, lumbering creatures with little or no intelligence, they made a good getaway. The village now swung away from them behind an elevation of cloistered hills that ranged north and west across a grassy escarpment of land. The sun, now at the zenith of its peak, showered them with peaceful warmth and their panic settled away into memory. But every time Sonic blinked, he saw those yellow eyes of the gawks with creamy white orbs in the middle. And he saw the head of the vanguard grinning playfully at them, as if it knew everything. As if it was teasing them. And hating them.

Like a cat with a mouse.

Knowing it would die.

Yet enjoying its last moments all the same.

They stopped near a lake, panting. Weaker than ever.

"Fucking apes." Shadow barked into the sky, dripping with sweat. "Why did they do that?"

Sonic sat deflated on the grass and could not feel the warmth of the sun sinking firmly into his fur. Nor did he feel his own sweat drip from his nose and chest.

"So they kill vanguard eh?" Shadow, oblivious, rested his hands on his hips and strutted around Sonic in a circle as his mind raced with what he had just seen. "They're too dumb to set traps. It can't be them. And they eat meat. Obviously forerunner behavior. But why did they turn on us like that? And how many settlements do they have?"

Sonic curled up on his little patch of grass and began to shiver despite the beaming heat of the day. "I'm hoping it's just the one."

Shadow peered down at the cobalt animal, as if examining him for symptoms of something contagious. "Fucking gawks." The elder hedgehog kicked at the grass and the flowers in a steel temper, expression hard and unreadable. "We didn't mean any harm. Crazy fucks. Must've seen us as dinner."

"We did invade their village in a way." Sonic regarded softly, "and we did force things from them. Which was foolish. I say we got what we deserved."

"But we're hungry, damnation!" Shadow barked, eyes locking onto him spitefully, "we needed what they had! And they must have had plenty of it! They're so dumb and mad that even if we sank to our knees and begged, they still would have responded the same."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I - I could tell. Anyway, it's no good sitting here mopping. We need food. We'll split up and search. We'll meet back when the sun hit's the mountains."

"But what about the next emerald? It'll be evening!" Sonic said, "the vanguard!"

"I know! I know! The gawks wasted a good portion of our time. But in the end, they'll be helpful. What we'll do is return there and hide in one of their shacks. Huts. Whatever. If they aren't afraid of the vanguard, we're safe. They'll unknowingly protect us. And then in the morning after we've recovered a little, we'll go straight for the fourth emerald. Now on your feet and let's move!"

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**Dib07: Tell me what ya think! And please R & R, I love it!**

**By the way, if there are enough requests I will upload the chapter on what happened to Sonic as a special chapter (in the castle). It will be a whole few pages, no reflections or anything like that - so let me know and I will uploaded it as an added feature.**


	8. Chapter 8 A night to Remember

**Dib07: I actually want this story finished up rather soon, as, thanks to this story I actually want to do some more Sonadow, and I won't start that until at least one of my stories is completed, and it'll probably be this one, and another. I have lots of ideas, and badly want to get started, so I'll get this one over and done with asap. Thanks again for all reviews. Please comment readers and let me know what you think so far!**

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><p><strong>Chapter 8 : A night to remember<strong>

'_At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam_

_Startles the pensive traveller while he treads_

_His lonesome path, with unobserving eye_

_Bent earthwards: he looks up - the clouds are split.__'_

_A Night Piece - William Wordsworth_

Carrying three apples and a handful of dock leaves, he returned back to the open meadow just as the sun sat cradled in the mountains. Shadow wasn't long. He returned with a bag slung over one shoulder and a bunch of carrots with the other. When he joined him, he looked displeased with what Sonic had found.

"Dock leaves and a couple of rotten apples? Nice." He dropped the fresh carrots still dusty with soil and dropped the bag containing the three emeralds. The austere colors of green, blue and red sat dully within its depths like multicolored fruit.

"You made that bag?"

"Yes. Wasn't hard. Sally showed me how to make one once using thread from the plants around you. Didn't she ever show you?"

Sonic shook his head, "I never had the time."

"Sonic, are you - okay? You look pale." _And very underweight. You still haven't recovered from the overlanders..._

The cobalt hedgehog perked at the concern and smiled hopelessly, hiding away his true feelings. "I'm great. And the carrots?"

"There were more gawks from my end. Another village. Smaller. They were growing these in a garden. I snatched them. Nothing special."

He sat down and started munching on the provided dock leaves. He was still raging with hunger.

Sonic settled down into the grass, knowing that Shadow would be on the lookout for any trouble. Right now however, he wanted to sleep. Sleep and forget everything. And maybe when he woke up, he'd be back home.

The last of the sun smother the belly of the sky in reds and captivating gold. It was sinking rapidly beyond the skyline and into the maw of hell itself, leaving them unprotected.

"I wish the moon could chase the vanguard away." Sonic said.

"Well it can't. We'll go back to the much larger village to the west as planned and hide. We have plenty of time."

"Heh. I don't wanna see them vanguard again for at least another few years!" He sat up, helplessly breathing out a loud yawn.

Shadow waited for Sonic to stand as he packed the few remains of the uneaten food in the bag with the dark emeralds. Then, silently acknowledging their commitment, they raced out towards the settlement with time to spare. Even so, the sun seemed to shrink further and further from them as if sensing their haste. Sonic could already imagine the vanguard waiting purposely in the mouth of their dens, licking their lips and waiting for the final signal to leap towards the world with open mouths.

They rounded over the hills, eventually slowing and taking cover so that they could steal within without the gawks seeing them. The gawks themselves seemed to have bad vision and hearing and were still going about their chores even as the last of the daylight was fading.

The two hedgehogs slunk through the grass like they used to in their hunted days of badniks. Bodies so close to the earth that they couldn't be seen. And the sound of stone making and the playful jostle of two males made their approach go unheard.

The shack from earlier, the one Shadow had planned to stow away in all along, stood with its door wide open against the growing shadows of the sun's descent. A beefy male was in there, grabbing a few fur coats and arrow heads with no sense of haste or urgency. As if they had no idea of what the darkness would bring. Which seemed - well - odd. They looked as though they had no defenses. No watch towers, walls or defended buildings. Any vanguard could storm in and take and kill whatever it wanted.

Shadow pressed through the grass and then sat, waiting patiently. _We shall see when the time comes._

Sonic brushed against his flank.

They watched the gawk pause in amongst the things stored untidily in the shack. The darkness was lengthening. The sun had all but gone. The fragile warmth had run away with it. It was now the hour of the vanguard. Yet the gawks went on, unconcerned. Like automated clockwork. Like controlled dolls programmed with their mindless tasks.

At last the gawk in the shack came out at last carrying an assortment of things in his bulging arms. His yellow eyes went straight over them, looking dead ahead in a stone like expression. No character. No feeling. Like a breathing, moving statue with no uniqueness.

"Okay, wait for it -" Shadow watched through the thick blades of grass to see the gawk go into another building behind them beside a pile of logs another gawk was sorting through. But it was looking away. Now was there chance.

"Go! Go now!"

They ran into the shack and climbed up on the shelves like snooping raccoons. Closing the door seemed too suspicious, so they left it open. Besides, having it closed wasn't all that helpful. They had pots and furs to hide under.

They made their way to the top self, some seven or eight feet from the ground and wriggled into a large pot each before covering themselves with the furs. The furs of dead vanguards. Then together they caught their breath and waited. Sonic peeped out from under his fur to still see the villagers outside working away. Some had gone inside more than others and more charcoal logs had been lit. But they didn't seem bothered at all at what was coming.

And then it came. Lethal and foreboding.

The howl of the hunting vanguard.

It winded up through the air like a siren. And it sounded close. Within the vicinity of the village.

The gawks seemed to break out a little from their programmed, lifeless states and ogled the darkness around their homes in wonder. In callous indifference.

"Sonic, whatever happens, you stay put unless I tell you otherwise." Shadow alerted him in the faintest whisper from within the den of his pot and furs, "even if one of those wolves comes in here. Got it?"

Sonic nodded. "Yes, Sir!"

The man/thing sorting out the logs straightened his back and shouted to another gawk, "Ti si emit Gawk."

"Sey sey, emit ot eid gawk."

Instantly, like something from a horror movie, a huge vanguard leapt from the shadows and tore into the closet gawk. The other forerunner type creatures picked up their maces and weapons, but this time the vanguard made their weight look stupid and clumsy. Not big and dangerous as they had advanced for the hedgehogs earlier in the day.

Sonic cowered deeper into the furs but morbid horror and compulsion kept him looking on through the dark gap of cover. He was sure Shadow was doing the same. And from their top shelf, through the open door (he sure wished they had closed it now) five more vanguards leapt into the village, decimating tables and gnashing into solid stone with their teeth. Two to three great black wolves pounced on a gawk too slow to raise his mullet and all of them tried to rip his throat out at once, resulting in a bloody spree of madness. Another wolf jumped all the way to the top of a roof from the view of the door, howling in triumph.

The gawks weren't putting up much of a fight. They had weapons, yet acted as though they didn't know how to wield them. The odds were unfair. It was a bloodbath. More wolves kept on coming. Ripping, tearing and biting. Each gawk, regardless of his size or strength, was pulled down and eaten on the spot. The crunch and grind of bones was appalling. But the vanguard weren't happy with half the village. They raided the homes like human warriors. Calculated and strategic. Eating more than they could possibly manage.

The gawks never screamed or roared out. Like mutes they fell like stones. Silently falling to the jaws of the enemy like hermits to the flames.

From the door they could see more and more vanguards than could possibly be needed arrive on the scene, snarling and biting amongst themselves as if disappointed and angry that there was nothing left to kill.

The lights in the village went out. Everything was lathered in darkness. And he could hear them. Padding around the destroyed village looking for something more. Not happy with their slaughter. Not happy with their kill count.

Not happy at all.

Now Sonic had wished they had gone someplace else. Someplace far and wide. Even hiding in the core of a volcano sounded much more promising than hiding in a shack on a rickety top shelf. Now they were fresh hedgehogs served in stone pots.

He heard them sniffing about. Closer now. He could imagine their red eyes probing the darkness of the shack, grinning maniacally with those teeth.

Then he could hear them sniff at the bottom self right below them. Some of them were in the shack and must have picked up their scent.

Shadow stiffened within his pot, readying himself to bolt. _There must be hundreds of them here in this village now. Do they rule the whole world when the sun goes down?_

He tried to think of where they could run to. There were trees in the forests. Great big yew or oaks towering like giants. They could climb up them, but if the vanguard could do the same, they'd be a little bit stuck.

The bottom shelf splintered and broke under soft, black paws. Hungry teeth lurched up towards them.

_They know -_

"Sonic, run and keep close to me! Now!"

They burst out from the furs almost at once and curled into their spiny balls as they flew from the top shelf and into the vanguard. The wolves took a hit and scowled with hate. Several more on the instant came bounding into the entry of the shack, slobbering. The two hedgehog balls bounced right over them and then the hedgehogs uncurled and zipped away from the village with a breath to spare. Infuriated, all the vanguard, as if all mentally connected and acting as one, left their current tasks and began the chase. A great hound of black with hundreds of running legs sprinted across the valley directly after them. Teeth white and brave against the darkness of their world.

Close together, Shadow and Sonic bolted across the open expanse of the meadows, their adrenaline lending them all the energy and strength they needed. A forest loomed up ahead. Pitifully inviting. As they drew closer, they saw stalk-like birds nestled high in the tree tops, standing like ornamental statues. No preening. No sleeping. Just frozen.

They came to a wide oak tree and Sonic touched his partner on the shoulder to stop him. Shadow looked at him to abject when he saw Sonic purse his lips with his finger.

Sonic pointed upward at the tree tops, at the birds and repeated his sign. Shadow shrugged and nodded.

They began to climb. As quietly as they could. The bark wasn't easy to grip. And they slid back down several inches of hard work if they missed a purchase.

The vanguard were coming.

Higher now, they were able to reach the branches and climbing got pleasantly easier.

Just when they had, the vanguard circled the base of the tree, their malevolent, baleful eyes peering up at them with rampant fury. Countless red eyes, brimming with hellish light, crowded them below. But they did not advance. Except one. Bent on an individual mind, ignoring the gross silence of the others, one of the bigger wolves began to climb. It was unaccustomed to such vertical chases, and sunk despite its long, cutting claws. And when it hit the floor, it yelped. The sound awoke the birds. Like robots on sensory alert, they flew fearlessly down right into the faces of the wolves.

Sonic, perched on a thick branch beside Shadow, turned away. He did not want to bear witness to another bloodbath. One was enough for the rest of his days.

Snarling, biting, clawing, the vanguard tried to annihilate all the birds too in the same manner they had the gawks. But the birds outweighed them with advantages of being in the air. Taking fewer casualties than the wolves, they pecked, tore and speared them. In the end the vanguard wisely began to retreat, licking their bloody muzzles and scampering away. Leaving a few of their dead.

Shadow looked on, mesmerized. _So they can be killed?_

Uncomfortable but safer, they slept on their branch amongst the leaves. But their dozes were only light and were full of evil, red eyed dreams with white, chasing teeth. So when they woke in untidy rhythms, they felt like they had hardly slept at all.

Morning came. And the hedgehogs dropped back to the grass again near the bodies of slaughtered birds and wolves. But they seemed like puppets now. Empty and full of ill forgotten purpose. Their eye sockets were hollow, as if their eyes had fallen out and had got lost somewhere. Their open mouths had no tongues. Only penetrating teeth. As if they were empty inside and beheld no organs.

Still walking in silence, for the birds that were left still dominated this forest in great numbers, they crudely left, heading for the open meadows, hoping to encounter no more monstrosities.

/~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/

"I couldn't live in a world so quiet, ya know." Sonic eagerly chatted as they strolled along heading for the yellow emerald. "Just listen to it! That's right! Nothing! Just the hum of insects! No normal birds! No animals! Just us and a few gawks!"

"It's noisy at night." Shadow ruminated, "so we must be really far back in the past, if the stars are different."

"Well, I'm sure we'll find out." Sonic beamed another glowing smile of gold, his mood and spirit lifting sky-high " How did you know to keep quiet with those birds?"

"Just a guess."

"A lucky guess."

"Heh, well I am lucky!"

The ground became harder at their feet. Trees coiled away into shrubs and thorny bushes that offered up no food. Only grinning suffering. There was no water here. No moist weed beds of ponds or lakes. Soon even the grass shriveled into dirt tracks. Hills rose and bent into unforgiving mountains of lethal beauty. And the heat rose where no breeze could ease them.

Set away and apart from the exotic mountains was the ridge indeed. Alone and isolated like a long finger of evil. Birds, fat, white and foreboding, stood on, around and near the ridge in silent mutiny of one another. Stock sill. Set like chess pieces. One had frozen while in the middle of flapping its wings. Another was half way to sitting down. Not even the sparse winds seemed to lift and tease their snowy feathers.

It was like they had all turned to stone. Each and every one of them. So even the approaching hedgehogs had to tiptoe and be careful of every step. Even jostling a little stone out of its place felt terrifying.

They wound closer and closer. The birds remained stiff statues. Did not even see them. Then Shadow waved his arm back and bent his fingers down to command Sonic to stop and wait for him here.

"Sonic, you stay and hide behind a rock or two. I promise I will be fine. I am the Ultimate Life Form you know!"

"I could just rush up there! And grab it!"

"It's not that simple. Besides, the gush of wind you'll create will be heard!"

Sonic, ears drooping a little, nodded and began to tiptoe backwards towards a bit of natural cover. He mentally wished him good luck. And Shadow seemed to sense it. He began slowly towards the birds, looking very small and alone.

_They__'__re like guardians. _He thought. _Nothing natural makes such things. So who did?_

The suspense was killing him even before he started the climb. And once he had, he knew now that there would be no turning back.

_God I hate climbing!_

The afternoon sun rolled over the crags and crevices of the spire he was climbing, forming possible footholds into shadow, making them appear more like gutted holes. To overcome the misjudgment that the light threw over the rocks, he felt his way up, gaining each foothold steadily, always peering up ahead and ignoring the giant birds as best he could.

Sonic meanwhile, posted at a block of sandy colored stone, couldn't bear to watch. He flinched every time he thought Shadow was going to slip. And he hid his eyes behind his hands as if not seeing Shadow's plight would make it better. Yet soon the compulsion, the allure of seeing Shadow battle against this trap made him peer through his fingers time and again, wishing Shadow wasn't suffering alone.

The clouds shifted dubiously in the sky. The sun shone merrily at an angle, straight into Shadow's eyes as he perilously crawled his way up. He planted one foot at a time on a foothold and used his hands, inch by inch using tiny ledges or jutting rocks to haul him up. The spire was thinner nearer the top.

Sweat rolling down his fur, he couldn't help but emit a small moan of exertion, one his lungs had to choke up against the heat, the tension and the labour of his straining muscles. As dreaded, the birds all moved at once in silence on the top most spire of rock closest to the yellow emerald, seeking the noise. Shadow clamped his lips shut and watched them, helpless from where he cringed, hands clenched like claws on the rocks.

And then, like lions tired of their excitement, they bayed into their still slumber and into the stone sentinels they appeared to be, landing back on the top rock at different angles. One had even stopped and had froze perfectly in mid-flight, its wings fully open to grasp the air. But it was still. And gravity did not seize it.

_Impossible._

The sun was drooping like a cow's head towards the west. Time was running out. Shadow was being so careful, so slow, that he didn't realize how much daylight he had used up. Yet despite it all, he was three thirds of the way up, sweating, shivering from muscle strain, but he was getting there without help.

He climbed steadily past within two inches of one of the birds. Its yellow legs were peeled and cracked against the day heat. Its eyes appeared hollow within. It stank of rotten sewage.

The throb and tease of the emerald made him want to rent the air with noise. Made him want to run recklessly up the last pace of rock and grab it. But his instincts, his hedgehog instincts so adeptly installed into his bio chemistry by Gerald his Creator, told him not to rush. Told him to survive. The emerald could wait.

The taller, thinner last bit to climb got harder. The stones were less stable. Deep gutted cracks riddled the whole towering pinnacle in weak lines where it could capsize. The rocks felt more loose and crumbly. Not all the footholds were safe or secure as the sheer climb got steeper.

He was right in amongst the main gathering of birds now. White feathers littered the rocks like dry snowflakes. Their stink was ghastly and their shadows lapped over him like foreboding tigers readying to pounce.

His foot moved upward and jabbed at a foothold. It cracked under his weight at once and crumbled. Little balls of rock bounced from under him like heavy shrapnel and raced towards the bottom. The birds flew into motion at last like feathered demons. Their razor beaks all charged angrily in ghostly silence. And then they poured down at Shadow, using their beaks like spiky swords. Three pecked the falling rock that had crumbled off into pulverized bits. One other scored Shadow's back deeply with its beak. Shadow bit down on a scream and tensed against the wall of rock, shivering. If he fell, it would be twenty feet before he hit the ground. And here and now he was more worried about the sound he'd make once he hit the bottom.

No more noise to attack and dismember, as if such sounds made them angry and pained beyond belief, the birds settled back down again as if nothing had ever happened.

But Shadow knew differently.

Thankfully his back had gone numb though he could still feel the wet, warm blood flowing down his flanks. He could not see the damage and didn't want to.

As Sonic stood in the cool shade of his boulder, he felt incompetent. Impatient. He knew how to do things his way, and if Shadow faltered or got them into trouble, he'd take the lead. So far, things were working, and Sonic was happy to observe until now. Now he was just plain frustrated.

Blood had splashed on the dry rocks below the Ultimate Life Form. But he had made it to the emerald. Its yellow gleam looked as golden as the late afternoon sun.

This emerald though, similar to the first, was inaccessible. It was covered in a thin film of darkness despite its valiant glow and scratched into the rock was another riddle. Shadow's heart sank to the pit of his empty stomach. Beside the words of the riddle was a small golden diadem that enveloped the base of the shield protecting the emerald. It looked like their first dial that they used to give the answer. Same material. Same offhand gold glow.

He almost said the words 'shit' out loud. He even moved his lips to say it, than remembered where he was. Twenty five feet up. Amongst unbreathing, watching birds signaled to sound.

He bent low against the rocks, finding it hard to concentrate on the riddle when he was hot, hurting and tense on making a sudden, accidental noise.

'_What maketh the world shake, And what makes the mountain but a fake.__'_

He eyed the birds mistrustfully. The sun was lowering too quickly again. _God, the daylight feels so short! Why is that? Is it because we dread the darkness so much now?_

He remembered the last answer to the riddle in that house was 'fire.' An element. But this new one threw him completely. _Makes the mountain but a fake?_

_How do I speak the answer, with these birds on top of me?_

_Fuck, fuck, fuck!_

He risked turning. Saw Sonic down below, closely at the base now. Must have tiptoed all the way from the boulder, no longer able to hide and inhale the tension. He looked so small and frail down there. Looking eagerly up at Shadow as if this old Ultimate Life Form could conquer anything.

Back to the problem at hand, Shadow went to touch the emerald. _Maybe I can grab it without solving the riddle? We could have done it with the red one, if not for that blasted trap door!_

He went to snatch it. The film of darkness repelled his touch like a wasp sting and he flinched away, biting his lips hard enough to draw blood so that he wouldn't gasp out loud.

_No good. Dark electricity. And yet emits no sound._

The shield covered the entire emerald. No way around it. And he couldn't quite figure out who or what had made such a shield to repel the ultimate creature. _Him _of all things!

_Come on! Gotta think! Sonic__'__s counting on me! If the last one was fire - it__'__s an element. I had the flames in my hand on a torch! What__'__s around me?_

Then it came to him. Rocks. Earth.

That was the answer.

Shadow turned to the protected emerald and lathered up caking dust and stones in his hand before spilling the sand over the diadem. Excitement rushed through him like ecstasy. The diadem gave a soft _click _so that the birds didn't react and the dark shell smothering the emerald vanished, offering it to him like forbidden fruit. He took it up into his grasp, only to witness its feral glow die away at once. Like the red and green ones before it. Now hulks of dark, unresponsive stones of dim color.

_Three down. Four to go._

The riddle was replaced by new words and numbers in the rocks. '_Thy wings 95__.__'_

With daylight burdening into creamy orange and amber, Shadow carefully descended, swimming in his own sweat and blood. He so badly wanted to scream out his frustration. Speak. Make a noise. The deaf silence was making him go insane! Never in his life had he expected it to be so painful.

He hit the ground far sooner than he had spent climbing the tower of agony. And he couldn't even sigh out a relief. The birds were still in range. Were in range for least another fifty or seventy yards, depending on how good their hearing was.

Joined by a glad, if very underweight Sonic, they retreated at a quiet walk until they were far enough away to bolt into a mad, chickened run. Over the hills and into the heart of the rolling sun.

* * *

><p><strong>Dib07:<strong> Talk about a long chapter! And it is the last of the slow chapters. The others are horrible. And rated T as such. The next chapter is called the 'Crystal Tower,' the nastiest trap of the bunch... unless you can swim, in which case there will be another waiting soon. It WILL gear up, so be prepared. This is your last warning. There will be blood.


	9. Chapter 9 The Crystal Tower

**Dib07: Very, very happy to update today because of the interest in this story so far. I wasn't too sure if people were… enjoying it and I was worried that it might be too different for some readers. But quite a few of you have been gloriously supportive and thus this is getting another update. Enjoy!**

**P.S: I apologize in advance for Shadow's foul language. He's a keeper! Also, if you like a good read with plot and angst, please check out my new Sonic story: Panacea. Check out the summary to see if it's your kind o' fic or not.**

**Chapter nine : The Crystal Tower**

'_And strange phantoms, doth let us oft foresee,_

_And oft of secret ills bids us beware:_

_That is our Self, whom though we do not see,_

_Yet each doth in himself it well perceive to be.__'_

_The Bower of Bliss - Edmund Spenser_

They creamed the air with mad, relieved laughter. Coughing and chuckling themselves stupid, overjoyed to hear themselves. Overjoyed to bless the air with sound. And more than that, the freedom to make that sound. It was music to their ears.

Another victory. Against all the odds. It felt unreal.

The sun was a calm blob in the sky. It still hurt Sonic's green eyes to stare at it. And the sky, a milky blue, was turning deep and sleepy for another dark night ahead.

After their fit of hysteria - one that tore some stress from their shoulders, Shadow opened his bag and popped the yellow one inside with the others, making it look like a pick and mix assortment of large sweets.

"Sonic, we have to go to the next emerald now." He said, "we must press on as quickly as we can."

"Let me help you with those cuts first," Sonic peered at the deep beak marks along Shadow's back. The deepest cut was between his shoulder blades. Fortunately each wound was clean. No sign of dirt or shrapnel from the rocks.

Using the crested water from a peaceful stream, Sonic told Shadow to sit down before he cleaned away the blood and then dabbed the injuries with external herbs, mainly being cordial and dock leaves to soothe the wound. Finally, with caring hands, he used butterbur as a poultice of fresh leaves to use as an external compress. "We shouldn't really be travelling anywhere with you like this." He said, sitting beside him after the job was done, "the compress will fall off and then your injuries will be open to infection."

Shadow smiled in appreciation. "Thanks Sonic, but save your concern. I can heal exceedingly fast compared to a normal Mobian. And my wounds will need the air to help them close up. But we _must _get on. The vanguard will hack us to bits otherwise. We can't fight them all night."

XXXXX

The hills splayed out in tufts of inedible grass and jagged stone paths. Little gorges scattered through the plain, forming lands into tiny strips of bone shapes. Their shadows grew longer on the ground.

Ahead was a long tower. A white tower. The tower they had seen at the very beginning. The one Shadow had advised to avoid.

More strident and superior than that diminutive spire of rock Shadow had sweated his guts out for, it glazed over them indifferently as if it was a house for the gods. Its base was enormous. Covering the length of eight cottages standing in a line. Its walls glittered back in glassy fragments. Truly remarkable. And it looked brand new. Untouched the day it was built. Unlike the previous traps that looked old and decayed. It both amazed and shocked the hedgehogs.

Shadow bent his head to look up at the monolith. It reached the heavens with its glass walls reflecting the sun's dying last embers, making them appear as if the walls were on fire. Then the sun splashed into darkness behind the mountains and the indigent glow of the walls turned black and cold.

There was but one door. Glass like the others. Tough and thick. There were two white metal pads - one on either side of the wall against the archway of the entry. And over it was a basin turned right side up.

Shadow looked at the first pad, frowning. He touched it but nothing happened. "Sonic, touch the other pad."

The blue hedgehog did, hesitantly. When each pad was pressed, the basin on the top of the door flipped upside down and a small silver key dropped from its belly. Shadow bent and picked it up.

"A key?"

"Try it on the door." Sonic suggested. Just then a long howl of the vanguard floated up the valley.

Shadow clicked the key into a lock much too big for the key. He turned it fruitlessly. "No good."

Sonic pressed on the door regardless. It opened. Swung out like all traps previously, inviting them within its morbid depths.

Shadow stowed the key into his bag for later. "I'm coming with you this time." Sonic said, ears pricked forwards. Eyes firm and resolute. "Those metal pads required two of us to spill out that key, though the key may mean nothing at all. If one of us tried to do that, I don't see how it could work. The doorframe's too large for both pads to be pressed at the same time. Which means something."

"Could be nothing."

The door snapped shut behind them, sealing them within the tower's bowel.

They had been ushered into a huge chamber of mazelike interiors of eternal crystal brilliance. Everything was - mirrors. The floors, the ceilings. The walls. Mirrors.

"I hope you like your reflection Sonic, because you are going to see a lot of it."

"Har, har. Actually, I do!"

They meandered on, slowly, necks craned upwards to take in as much of everything that they could see. Towers of crystal swooned over them like swan necks. Arches. Corridors. And they were followed by a trillion reflections of themselves, confusing movement of anything else that could be approaching.

"What a - brilliant feat of engineering!" Shadow whispered, eyes wide and excited.

"Only Robotnik could make something as ugly as this."

"Or the gods. They could make something as sick and as twisted as this place. You have my word on that."

Sonic touched one of the walls and his mirrored reflection of a thousand did the same. The wall was cold and hard. Like ordinary glass.

Soon they walked so far, so cut off from outside that Shadow turned to find that they were already lost within the confines of an insane palace fit for punished kings. They could not find the way back to the door. Everywhere looked the same. A true labyrinth of reflection. Confusion.

"Gotta give it to them," Shadow sighed austerely, "this is truly amazing. It's all so intricate - so - ah - so perfect!"

"Are you in awe of this place?"

"Yes. I can't help myself."

Shrugging, Sonic turned down a different path, running his fingers over the cool glass.

Shadow walked soberly down a new passageway, the glass sides were closer to him now, allowing a narrower point of passage. But the fascination of this place curdled him inside all the same.

"Oh Sonic - this whole tower must have taken centuries to build! Oh it's amazing! I thought the Ark was the ultimate feat of human construction and intelligence, but I was wrong! Maybe - maybe this is a palace! Sonic?"

He turned just as the edge of his heel pressed down on a hidden and carefully disguised flooring of glass. It signaled a glass door to close ten meters behind him.

"NO!" He charged back. Too late. His skull hit the new wall and he was thrown back on the floor. The glass didn't make a soft landing at all. "No! You bastards!" He lunged to his feet and banged fretfully on his mirrored image. "Sonic? Can you hear me? I've been closed off!"

Sonic fell forward, sneakers finding friction and traction impossible on such a shiny, smooth surface. Still, he collected himself and came to a wall. Where had Shadow gone?

"Shades? Shades? Don't tell me you got lost!"

He looked about, peering at each passage in the hopes of seeing his red and black friend.

Each passage he was presented with was unwelcomingly empty. All he had was himself and a thousand other blue little hedgehogs with the same worried expression. And everywhere he turned they stared at him.

_This is a place to go mad in. _"Hullo?"The glass seemed to absorb the noise and rebound it back. All he could hear were his own cries deafening his own ears.

XXX

Shadow was still pounding his powerful, muscled body into the wall that had snared him from his friend. "No! I won't give in you effing piece of flying shit! Fuck you! The birds were worse! Open this door dammit!"

He stumbled back, panting. He looked at his reflections. He saw his own exposed teeth and feral eyes of red anger. Even the reflections under him were the same. It felt like he was walking or standing over water. Just him. Just him.

"I have to find the emerald in this place." He told his echoed friends, who spoke and moved at the exact time he did. It was unsettling. One reflection was bad enough without having to be surrounded by a million - all the FUCKING time! "And we'll be free. I just hope he stays put. Shit - I shouldn't have wondered off - but he should have stayed closer to me."

He went on, having no other option. The pull of the emerald kept tugging him mindlessly - insanely to the left the whole time. Like north in a compass. Always pointing. So Shadow was either affronted with deadends. Or worse. He kept going round and round in circles, accompanied by his reflections.

His astonishment at the tower, its pathways and white arches, all mirrors, became a sordid hell of confusion and mental irritation. He cursed it. Cursed his mirrored brothers. And cursed the whole design and eternal labyrinth that had heralded them inside like wandering rats. And Shadow was the one with the bag of food and water. Sonic had nothing.

He'd soon collapse before long with dehydration.

This made Shadow take his temper out on another wall, battling his own images and roaring angrily.

"FUCK YOU! Fuck whoever's doing this and let us OUT!"

He slunk against the wall and felt the red blotches of hate and ire go damp and turn into sweat on his body. "Okay, think. Have to walk away from the emerald's power, or I'll go nowhere. This place has been rigged. No other way to describe it. Gotta keep thinking - stay calm -" He unsteadily rose to his feet and started walking to the right this time. Then taking a left and another right through the crystal prison.

He had never felt so alone. So frustrated and livid.

_What if there is no way out?_

XXXX

_I - I don__'__t understand it -_

_Either we are still on the other side of the world, or we aren__'__t on it - anymore._

_That__'__s impossible. We can__'__t! The emeralds don__'__t have that kind of power, do they?_

_It__'__s a tower. It__'__s - I - I don__'__t like it. It brings out a feeling of foreboding. We should avoid it - for now._

X

Sonic had sat uncomfortably on the cold floor of the glass, thinking.

Time passed. Sonic wet his dry lips, feeling thirsty - _when was the last time I had a drink? - _and sadly realized that thinking would bring no help.

He stood and his reflections swung into the same motion.

Walking towards one of his reflections, he touched it as before and probed it, feeling for a switch. A hidden pad in the glass. The startling image of himself being reproduced so many times made his perceptions of things confusing. It made his head and stomach hurt.

"Come on, there's gotta to be something! Please let there be something!"

Futile. Felt - so futile.

"Was it something we did during chaos control? What? What was it?" He begged hurtfully at his reflected images. "We shouldn't have come here!"

His green eyes flashed dangerously and he turned to the winding corridors of deadends. Junctions and perilous repetitions of the same pathways.

Like a rocket he exploded down the glass passages, his reflections chasing to keep up with him until they turned into sapphire blurs.

Turning, weaving, braking he skidded and hit the walls, unable to grip the surfaces. He kept on going regardless, despite the sharp, bruising corners and the long, endless paths that turned him back around to where he started. He was growing more tired. More thirsty. Now more than ever he wanted to be outside with the vanguard. Rather being torn up than dying here. Alone and trapped.

He slammed into another corner after braking with everything he had. The glass felt like steel. Worse. And did not even crack or splinter.

Shadow wasn't having any better luck. He was journeying more calmly to conserve energy towards another flat, unmistakable deadend. Mapping his way, he used the food he had collected from the gawk farms as a trail of where he had already been. He peeled cabbage leaves off and dropped them as markings and stripped the green leafy tops off the carrots, trying not to waste too much just in case he was going to be in here for a long time and needed to eat.

The spectrum of his body images from every angle, every _possible_ degree was challenging enough to remain sane. But so far, every trap they had been in had had a way out. The cabin was an in-out job. The house was much crueler, yet they still had conquered the traps and had gone onto the next one. The spire and the birds, that was passable too, so long as you used your wits and your skill. The same had to go for this one. Otherwise, what would be the point?

"Maybe a wizard used to live here, alone and made traps. For entertainment. Or because he was cruel and bored. And he used his magic to conjure up birds, vanguard and crystal palaces."

As he proceeded he pressed hard or gingerly on sections of glass for weakness. A trigger or a switch to lead him to an exit perhaps. Or the next segment of a sick and twisted game.

A bad smell hit him. Faint at first, like rotten eggs. And then it wafted down a corridor he had already been through several times because he could see the cabbage peel from earlier on the glass floor.

"What the -?" He slung his bag over his shoulder and stepped lightly down it, crushing the cabbage leaves with his boots.

Gingerly he looked round the corner of the long glass corridor and his own suspicious red eyes gloated back at him from the reflected corner he was using.

"Darn it."

The smell was stronger. Like a hundred animals had all died and rotted together in one place in this crystal maze who had given up weeks ago for an escape.

He kept on; renegotiating the track he had previously taken. Soon the pong was unbearable. And he could hear something. Like a rampant hissing. Slow and undeterred.

Foolishly, hopefully, he called out softly, "who - who's there? Sonic?"

Whatever it was, it thudded around, hissing louder until it hurt Shadow's ears. A long, black tentacle slathered up the wall next to him and he shrieked and yelped backwards, his sore flanks slamming into the glass wall.

The one tentacle was joined by four more. Long and silky black, as if someone had just waxed and polished them. Something even heavier moved beyond his vision. He flinched at a sudden movement on his left, but when he turned to stare at it, ready to attack, it was only his reflections.

A tethering sound of scratching screeched towards him like eight knives slashing across glass. The smell was overpowering -

A giant insect leg bolted before him, salamander red. Then he saw long, curved spikes on smelly flesh. Lastly the tentacles swished in his sight, eight in all. Long, black and powerful. For one whole instant all Shadow could do, was stare.

_A monster -_

It mass was so beautifully ugly. Sweltering with sweaty oil. No eyes or ears. In fact no visible sensory organs at all. Only spikes on its lower chest and tentacles as a face with six centipede legs (three on each side). So immense for such narrow corridors its whole mass squeezed in through the gaps like putty.

The instant was over. Four tentacles swung towards Shadow and slammed him _hard _through the air. The hedgehog went soaring. So powerful was the hit that he soon went through the glass. Wall after wall. Shadow tried to scream. His whole world opened to pain and misery.

Nothing existed except for the pain. And the eruption of _smash _after _smash_ of glass.


	10. Fantasia Down: Castle Prequel Part 1

_**Fantasia Down: Special Chapter**_

_**Please read before venturing forth**:_

_This exert in Fantasia Down is much longer than I originally intended, so I've had to cut it in half. This chapter and the **one after** details what happened before the 'Chaos Control' we all know Shadow performed to get them out of the castle. This is what happened before, and why Sonic has turned out like he has and why Shadow hasn't snapped in his face yet. Keep in mind that this is only HALF of the prequel._

_DC111 has kindly suggested I put this up to help people understand what Sonic has gone through. I hope you all enjoy and thank you for reading!_

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

Late with his date with Shadow already, Sonic braked to a full stop in the thick, lush forest of Ulbion. Here was an overlander city, one of the largest in existence. Overlanders always had been rare… had been since the animals, disease and war pushed them back. Few were good and innocent. Others were not. Sally had always strictly told Sonic to avoid such creatures. They were crafty. They planned. They hurt others for no reason. Of course, Sonic didn't need to be told twice. After knowing full well what Eggman was like, he got the picture and ignored the useless warnings. But now, like never before, he remembered her words, and the steely edge in her tone. He would have kept on running. But this town had been a recent victim to a new uprising. Against what he wasn't sure, for those matters were for the High Council, however the reason he stopped was because of what he saw.

Hiding behind the thick, leathery blades of moist leaves and grass, he stood in the wavering shadows watching adult overlanders beat children. Their small, young forms were being beaten down to the grimy dirt of a open pig pen outside the main town, their naked backs open to all onlookers, bloody sores marking their furless skins. They screamed and cried. Mothers were torn away, beaten back themselves just for trying to stop them.

Holding tightly to the green emerald, Sonic took a step forwards, unable to see children get hurt like that. They were innocent… surely? Just like kittens. Forced under control by the merciless adults.

A young man without a shirt on to reveal his bronze muscles in the flashing daylight, thrashed a child with a whip with knots at the end. What overlanders called a, 'nine tails.'

The cries hurt his ears. He couldn't ignore it. He had to help, though he wasn't exactly sure how. And what on Mobius were they being punished for?

Eventually, as luck would have it, the adult overlanders, four in total, stopped the wild beatings and gathered up their torturous devices, yelling commands to each other and leaving the children on the floor in the puddles of their own blood. Their rampant voices were ugly and low in tone, much like Eggman.

"Devious creatures." He said aloud, leaning into the undergrowth, sure that no one could see him this far out. Overlander eyesight wasn't one of their greatest assets.

The last ones beckoned towards their metal structural housing, picking up buckets, more tools and slapping each other heartily on the back as if they had done something gracious. The rest of the town was sullen and quiet. A fire burned thickly in the distance, possibly arson or a purposeful bonfire. Who knew why overlanders did anything? But as Sonic watched, he saw his chance.

Not one for acting shy and cautious, Sonic streaked across the last league of lush grass and onto offending concrete and towards the children. With such proud speed, he was there in seconds and amongst the baby overlanders. There weren't many. Only three. A girl and two boys. Sonic could not tell their ages, but they looked younger than teenagers. As they looked up at him in widening perplexity, he saw that their faces were mud stained. Clothes nothing but worn, greasy rags. Flies burbled over the fresh cuts and swelling bruises on their backs made by the romancing lance of the nine tales.

"You little ones, okay?" He asked, looking at each one in turn.

"You're an animal." Said one, tears running down her filthy cheeks. "You should run."

"Why would I run? I'm not afraid of overlanders!"

"Do you bite, mister?" Asked the youngest boy. He sat up, a little more spirit left in his large brown eyes. He probably hadn't had a decent bath in months. None of them had.

"Yes, otherwise I wouldn't be able to eat little children!" He said with an open, sunny smile, "come on, and I'll get you to your mommas! But tell me, why were they hurting you like that just now?" These children were awfully brave for what they had just been through. The new wounds on their backs were sinful, yet not one of them had broken down to cry or go hysterical. It was almost like… this was normal for them.

He took a child by the hand and lifted her up. They smelled different… aside from the blood, the grease and the sweat. It was a funny, sweet sort of smell that he didn't particularly relish.

"By not helping them." Said the boy.

"Helping them with what?"

"They wanted us to kill our first animal. But… the rabbit got away… we weren't quick enough."

"O…kay…" Now this was out of context. "Why do you have to kill…"

"For honor. Let me show you." Said the child, taking his hand once again and leading him to a bag. The bag he had not seen before. It lay limp and soiled like a dead thing in the dry heat of the day. And it smelt… bad sitting there… on the sweaty concrete.

The bag was gently zipped open. An explosion of flies burst from within it like a living, breathing nest. Sonic jerked back to avoid them. The smell turned into a repugnant reek that reminded him of infections. Swarming, thick disease. And death.

With the child still holding him, he looked down. Too engrossed in what he was about to see, his excellent hearing and sensory perception failed to detect the shadow approaching him from behind… and the bloody stench from the bag covered all smells of any approaching danger.

Tugging the bag flap open, the girl revealed what was inside. It was animal organs. There were bits of dark liver slopping out over the rim, some intestines and what could have been a whole heart. The sight was so horrifying, that at first, all Sonic could do… was stare in dumb consternation.

Heavy hands like iron clamps bit over his shoulders from behind. Thanks to his bitter nights of relentless training, Sonic reacted at once, fetid organs forgotten in that one instant. He bucked out, kicking and trying to swing his arms round. His spines stiffened upon command like miniature soldiers, hoping to break away from his opponent, whether it be hungry wolf or overlander.

"We got a live one boys!"

The grip hardened on his shoulders. His spikes jutted uselessly against metallic gauntlets so strong, that all his quills did was make a few scratches.

"Let go of me!" Sonic grunted, legs kicking at nothing. Arms striking nothing.

"Out the way before he gets loose, Murdoch!"

Something sharp and painful entered his back from behind. The sensation was so sharp and brutal, it felt like wet fire was eroding that part of him. Or a million and one needles jabbing into one sensitive region.

Complete paralysis enveloped his body as if a giant had just crunched him utterly into a fist. Legs and arms dangled uselessly as if they were dead.

He was dropped to the floor, this much he knew. The hot dirt connected with his nose and chin, but the pain went unnoticed against a wall of absorbing, swelling numbness.

The children were staring down at him in a ring. Their faces expressionless. As blank as a canvas yet to be decorated with the color of emotion.

"It dropped an emerald!" Someone boomed. It was faint and faraway, like it had been uttered underwater. Many, many miles below the surface.

Ironically, he could hear Sally's voice drone somewhere in his skull like a loose bullet. Could imagine her expressionless face as she heralded her warnings. "_Overlanders set traps. They want the emeralds._

_Are nothing but bad news._

_You see…_

_Dangerous…_

_Will_

_Don't go…_

_Kill you…"_

**xxxxxxx**

Lashing pain. Unnatural, grinding pain.

Flashing… like electric whips… stinging the very fibers of his being.

The eroding dreams were seeping out from under him, the last darkness of protection weeping away. The numbness, his saving grace, had ended long ago, leaving him sore and cramped. Eyes still tightly wedged shut, he went to move. His natural instinct was to move away from the pain. Flee from the hurt. But moving was not only useless, it only made the agony worse. New hot fire flashed up the leg he tried to move as if his very joints were filled with fever and sand. Jerking to a halt, he lay, crippled and desperate to breathe past the pain. Slowly… too slowly… the yammering, screaming pain wasn't so up close and direct. As his body began to ease back into its own tune after the paralyzing drug, his brain was able to push past the agony and explore other senses. He was lying on what must be concrete. It was hard and solid beneath him, nothing like grass or soil he was so used to. He could smell the cloying, abhorrent tinge of blood. His ears flickered left and right tentatively, attuned to the drips behind him, and the batter and sway of something metal jangle not far in front.

Forcing himself to take his time in case he hurt himself yet again through haste alone, he pried both his eyes open. His vision swam in a watery stream of incoherent colors. Sonic blinked, held his eyes shut, then opened them again. Clearer now, the fog pushed back a little, he could make out vague shapes in this very reddish room.

"Hey, he's waking!" The voice, loud and true, made his ears snap down due to the brazen loudness. A brick may as well have been slammed down upon his still-languid mind.

"That _horizan _drug sure is effective against these cretins, huh?"

"Yeah, and who knew it would drop an emerald! Talk about luck!"

"Then it must know how to use them."

"What, aren't we gonna have it for dinner?"

"No, you tripe! Besides, we have plenty. This one's too scrawny to fill up an old man!"

Sonic instinctively wanted to curl. Curl up from the danger and use his quills to hurt his predators. His enemies. But when he tried – fighting against new, biting pain as he did, his arms and legs did not comply so readily. He could move them, but he couldn't bring them round. They remained fixed behind his back, and his ankles were bond together. He knew not with what, but some kind of molten metal that was too strong to break.

He wondered if he should be panicking right now. He certainly wasn't in the correct frame of mind and no alarm seized him or made his heart accelerate. Maybe it was because of the drugs still nuzzling his dopey system. Or because he hadn't fully fathomed what he was in for.

"Fuck, this is taking too long. You shouldn't have used all of it!" Footsteps crunched over brittle concrete towards him.

"Hey wait…" Said a much younger overlander voice. "It's… cobalt."

"Yes?" The closet one quipped sharply. His reigning authority had to place him as the leader, or so the hedgehog thought.

"It might be the hedgehog called Sonic Maurice. The thing that's been the main leader of the animals. A lot of us have suggested the same."

"So what? If he is, a bonus for us! Now lift him up! Come on!"

Weighty, rough hands clasped his thin appendages without care. It was almost like molestation. The warm, comforting concrete was pulled away, and he naturally went to kick out, but his bond legs only jerked at the impulsive reflex.

Sitting up, his arms and legs were further attached to something else. Something equally as solid as the floor. He went to look. They were attaching him to a vertical pipe that spilled out of the ground like the thick, metallic belly of a snake. "What… what are you… doing…?" Was all he could fumble out for the time being. Nothing as of yet seemed serious or clinically important. Everything wavered and slowed… like a dream. Thank Dowa the pain wasn't so bad. "I'm… I'm late… need to find… Shades…"

"Shades?"

"Sunglasses? Never mind. Its still delusional. Not a bad catch though. It's a full grown adult male. Lovely fur." Fat fingers roamed freely over his svelte pelt, greedy hands groping across his downy chest and across his shaky thighs. "I really need a scarf. The winter coming is going to be a bad one. I could really need it."

"You have plenty of brown ones!"

"Yeah… brown! That color gets rather dull after a few decades!"

"No, not this time. Or maybe you can have what's left, if you like a little red with yer blue. Now step aside!"

"Yeah, whatever, Murdoch. Man, I liked blue!"

Shadows shifted. Boots scattered across the worn concrete. Brain still fuzzy. Clearing yes… but whatever they had drugged him with had been very potent. Perhaps too much. He willed his body to fight faster against it. Yank it out of his system.

Too slow…

Too slow…

"What clan do you belong to?" Asked a haggard voice. A voice that smelt of alcohol and rotten, half-digested meat. Sonic looked up, smiling past his blindness.

"Clan? Like a tribe? Or did you just say flan?"

A powerful force smacked his head back, slamming his skull against the pipe as a welcome. New pain resounded round his brain in jubilant echoes.

"You were carrying an emerald. Do you know how to use them, little piggy?"

"Dowa… you smack like a girl."

"Little bitch! I'll…"

Sonic flinched against the pipe, trying to draw his knees up to his chest. But the final deliverance never came. He tried to see passed the wrenching blackness, eyes terribly watery and diluted. An overlander had stepped in, holding the other back.

They truly were weird, enigmatic creatures.

"No, not this way. We can't do it like this. The other one died too quickly from its wounds."

"T-Then how, Hyssop? Fuck's sake! We need the information it has! We have all the emeralds now! We're just a baby step away from using them all! And _we don't know how!"_

"Beat this blue pig to death and you'll have no answers! I have a better idea. We starve him for three days. Then we'll see how strong he is then."

"Three days? Can it… can he…?"

"Yes. Come on. He can't get out and we have work to do. Move!"

It took a while for them all to shuffle out. All shepherded by one dominant male.

The metal door slammed after their leaving with a massive thud that made the very concrete vibrate, then the turn of keys in the lock, and Sonic was finally alone.

Head buzzing, he fell asleep.

**xxxxxxxxxxxx**

When he next woke up, he had a huge, throbbing headache. But he could not remember what had happened, or why he was here, nailed to some rotten, rusty pole. Ears perked high, his eyes tried to take in everything at once, sight sharp and crystal clear. He was in a room from hell. The walls were red, but it wasn't painted on. It was red with blood. Animal corpses had been dumped in the corners of the room like common discards. And this was where the malefic smell was coming from. He remembered organs… stuffed in a bag. Children… silently pleased at him being taken away.

Sonic looked up, face dark with a vengeful snarl. He wasn't dead yet… not even hurt. Well, aside from the headache. So they must be keeping him here for a reason.

"Hey!" He shouted, trying to keep from sounding too angry just in case he brought in the wrong kind of reception. "Hey! This is illegal! I want my lawyer! Hello!"

But no one came.

He sat uncomfortably, the concrete becoming unbearably rough and hard against his soft rump. He tried to avoid looking at the dead corpses piled against each other, yet his eyes would often sweep over to their wrangled, misshapen forms without realizing.

New strength returning, he pulled against the metal and concrete bindings sealing his wrists and ankles together. His raised quills scratched against them, yet it was increasingly futile.

Swapping his strategies around, he yanked and pulled against the pipe that so cruelly kept him rooted to one spot.

"Come on! Come on!" He strained like a horse, trying to feel for a weakness against these imprisoning chains. Twisting, pushing against them, heaving forwards… all for naught. Tired out, he sat back, purposely bashing the back of his skull against the pipe in frustration. "Shoulda listened to Sal. Sal… I'm sorry. Shades too. I've wasted at least an hour of your time before you gave up waiting for me. I stood you up, huh? And lost the emerald I was going to give you. All for a couple of overlander children. Lame. Having such a big heart sure is a disability." Angry, he pulled again against the immovable bonds, so close to crying out in ire. "Shoot."

He leant back for a rest, aching terribly for a cup of tea. Some biscuits. Even a plate of steamy oatmeal. Or a big, fat watermelon. His stomach gurgled in reply to his rolling thoughts. He smiled, the expression lost when again he opened his eyes to the bodies. Animals that belonged to families. Partners. All killed. In this very room. When he would get out, he'd screw the overlanders to the wall like the trophies they loved so much and see how they liked it.

"And_ I_ thought Eggman was bad."

He was worried. Sitting here, waiting for something to happen. Anything to happen. And he thought of Sally… and Tails…waiting for him to come home. Waiting… and worrying just like him.

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

Shadow had sat in the long, wild grass, waiting. Toying with the golden ring. And waiting some more. The flies were thick in the air like choking dust, and Shadow would keep waving at their formation if they hung too close to his face. After a few hours and knowing that he had been unfavorably been stood up, he left, angry and moody. This was going to be the day… the day he'd… "Oh forget it. It would have never worked out. We're just too different…"

He thought of dropping the ring into the grass and be done with it. However, some hidden thought, some primal instinct bespoke of veiled possibilities. To make sure all was well, and it was just him who had seen Sonic's ignorant side, he decided he'd ask around.

Many hours later, as it got dark, there was still no sign of the blue vagrant. Yes, he acted like a feral traveler, out to suit his own ends. On stupid adventures. To please himself. But when he asked the villagers, and namely Amy, Sally and Tails, they too hadn't seen him.

It wasn't unlike Sonic to go wondering off when it suited him, but something seemed _off_ this time.

Taking the ring, Shadow went home to his little cottage on the shadows of the town, locking the door behind hm. "Fine, Sonic. Have it your way. The deal is over."

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

The days rolled on. There was a tiny slit of an opening on the high portion of the wall, and even that was grilled so that not even a fat fly could buzz through the plating. It was enough however, to allow some light through, and it was this that helped Sonic gage the days that passed. As he sat, tugging uselessly, automatically against his binding, he could hear the birds singing outside. Their intoxicating lullabies were close to driving him insane. He wanted to go out there, out in the birdsong; and be free. Sometimes his mind did escape. He floated through the walls that held him and ran through the hot, noisy overlander city until he met the open woodland that welcomed him in like an old friend. He passed under the shifting shadows, heading home. He splashed over a few muddy puddles, enjoying the rush of the wind and the squinting shine of the sun between the trees.

His stomach gurgled loudly, and he opened his eyes to a blood-stained room. The four walls regarded him malignantly as if they had eyes too. He heard overlanders walk past the door frequently, the shadows of their boots shifting beneath the tiny gap under the iron door. His ears pricked at their keys that jangled hopefully. But no one came in.

On the third day he could feel himself getting weaker. His mouth and throat were dry. It hurt every time he swallowed. It kept him awake at night. And even though the room was never particularly cold, he began to shiver in the baleful shadows as if he was sitting in a giant ice box. Sometimes… sometimes the dark shadows moved. He'd blink or move his sight to catch them, only for them to vanish like ghosts. Every few hours or so, he heard animal screams not too far from his box. They squealed and roared for a while before an abrupt silence split the air, and then there'd be no more noise. Sonic reckoned that these… people killed animals for honor. Like a tribal thing. Of course, they weren't stupid or barbaric. They were socially and technically advanced. They had a city. Weapons. A hierarchy. No. These people believed they were at war with animals, when in fact nothing of the sort existed. Yes, animals and overlanders had had their differences, but not like this. This was… this was genocide.

At last… on the evening of the third day… an answer.

Plans of escape already at hand, Sonic sat rigid against his pole, legs crossed, eyes narrowed. Two men entered his gory domain. Both of them wore sweaty grey overalls, each with a nametag pinned on to their left breast. One was called Murdoch, the other was named Joe.

Stowing the keys back into his pocket, fat Joe closed the door shut behind him with a finalizing slam. Overlanders were much harder to read. Their eyes were small and shrink-wrapped into their faces. They had no ears, so he couldn't tell when they'd be afraid or unsure. They had no tails to depict if they were happy or sad. Which made them all the more alien. And their stench! He curled back against the pole in the hopes it would get him further away from them. It was futile.

"Three days with no food and water, and you still look… strong." Murdoch remarked, removing the baseball cap on his head and using it to wipe the grease from his unshaven chin. "So ya name's, Sonic?"

"Yeah, pal. What's it to you?" He croaked through his sore throat.

"We've been doing some ground research. Mr. Robotnik has a warrant on your head… but we're not in with that old bruiser. He's your enemy as much as ours. What we did find out… was that you do know how to use the gems."

"Gems?"

"Chaos emeralds. You brought one in with you. Thanks to you, we now have seven. They weren't easy to obtain. Now," he breathed in deep and produced a pack of cigars, "we want some answers. Nothing exotic. Just simple questions we'll ask of you. And you'd better co-operate. Or things could get a little… personal."

"Say, could you spare me some food? Your friend looks like he can certainly spare some." He nodded at Joe's profound roundness. "Give me something, and I'll answer one question."

"Think you're smart, are you? Listen, pig, you aren't in a position to negotiate." Murdoch jammed the pack of cigars into Joe's fat hands and kneeled down to Sonic's level. "You have no idea who I am, do you?"

"Same here, pal."


	11. Fantasia Down: Castle Prequel Part 2

**Fantasia Down: Special Chapter**

**Please read before venturing forth**:

This exert in Fantasia Down is much longer than I originally intended, so I've had to cut it in half. This last chapter after details what happened before the 'Chaos Control' we all know Shadow performed to get them out of the castle. This is what happened before, and why Sonic has turned out like he has and why Shadow hasn't snapped in his face yet. Keep in mind that this the last half of the prequel.

DC111 has kindly suggested I put this up to help people understand what Sonic has gone through. I hope you all enjoy and thank you for reading!

**xxxxxxxxxxxxx**

"Oooh I'm scared! This morning I drowned a family of kittens. Why you ask? Because I hate the sound they make in general. Drives me up the friggen' wall!"

Sonic pounced against his restraints, inches from biting the man's face. Shadow would have had it in him to bite and rip and tear. But Sonic hesitated at the last moment, not sure if he wanted to go through with it. He wasn't yet ready to take the plunge and hurt another's life.

"Ooh, getting feisty are we?" Murdoch drew back with a soft grinning snarl. He scratched the back of his scalp, fingers chiseling through short, fine black hair. "How many emeralds are there in total? Do we have them all, or are there more?"

"There are twelve million of them!" He said with a proud, deft smirk that did not beguile the men. His mocking triumph was short lived. He was pounded in the face, head catapulted back against the pole. It was all so sudden, pain leaping and blazing that he hung helplessly against his restraints, blinking and drooling blood.

"You wanna play games? Sure. I'll play along." He heard Murdoch say calmly through the pulsating agony, "you obviously like pain, my friend. I don't know much about hedgehogs, but I know enough to know where to hurt you."

"You coward!" Sonic lunged again, legs trying to lash out, but the bindings held them back. "Imprisoning me like this, the lot of you! Let me go, and fight me like a man, you… you murderers!"

"Murdoch?" Joe said in the background, "this one's tough. I say we starve him for another…"

"No. We're running out of time. We're getting the information we want… now! I'm done playing the nice guy." After declaring this, he produced a razorback knife from one of the many slots in his weapon belt. "Joe, hurry up and light me that cigar for God's sake!"

"Here, boss."

Murdoch took the cigar and draw in a long drag from the toxic stick. When he exhaled, he did it full in Sonic's face, causing the hedgehog to bunch his eyes shut and collapse in an explosion of rough coughs. "Now tell me. How do we use the emeralds? How do we use their powers? Don't lie. We know what you can do, an what the gems can produce."

After his spree of coughs, he took in a shaky breath and spat, "the power would be too much for you and the city. You wouldn't know how to control it. You'd destroy yourselves. Besides… how'd you manage to obtain the six?"

"We stole them." Murdoch replied easily. "Well, actually they were just sitting there outside one of old Robotnik's bases. Our scouts picked 'em up. Easier than stealing candy from a baby."

"Don't you think that's just a little bit strange? Finding them dumped there, so close to his base?"

Murdoch shrugged. "Nope. Maybe someone was feeling charitable? Now, tell me. How do we use 'em?"

"Okay… okay…" Sonic eased a cleaner lungful of air into his chest before replying, "go to the western plains of Mobius. There's a waterfall there in the remotest parts of Sagelu."

"Joe, are you writing this down?" Murdoch snapped at his insubordinate.

"Y-Yes, Sir!" He whipped out a tatty notebook full of pornographic doodles and began to jab down Sonic's directions.

"There's a temple there called Mount Oldlan."

Murdoch nodded. "Go on."

"There you will find a massive teacup that will serve out seven spoonfuls of sugar!" He giggled despite himself and the tight frown Murdoch was giving him. "There will be thirteen fairies and a bird that will… that will…"

"One last chance, blue pig." Murdoch's hand flashed dangerously fast and grabbed Sonic's throat, "tell us, NOW!"

"You'll get nothing out of me." Sonic replied steadily, eyes hooded, green pupils looking deeply into Murdoch's. Fearless. Quietly confident. "Ever. So long as the birds still sing and the grass still grows, I'll_ never_ tell you."

"You don't fully understand us, hog. So I'll show you, and maybe… just maybe, you'll change your mind. So… let's get reacquainted!" Murdoch's eyes flashed in excitement. It had been a long time since he had faced anything that hadn't broken after the first day of the starvation and torture program.

Taking the knife, he bit it deep into Sonic's arm, blood instantly welling and bubbling down matted fur. Sonic jolted and struggled away, the blade producing ice cold pain. He could imagine each fiber of flesh, each string of sinew being sliced through.

"Fuck you!" He yelped, struggling, heaving against the merciless metal.

"Ooh, so you do know overlander profanity? Who taught you that?" The crimson blade left the nice slash wound dribbling red down his ruined arm. A nice, deep slit had been formed, chugging out blood as fast as the river flowed. Crimson rain began to pool beneath the hedgehog in growing puddles. "Ready to tell me yet?"

"Why… why are you d-doing this to me?" He gasped, a tiny shard of fear awakening within his falling confidence. "I'm just a hedgehog. I've done n-nothing to you. Let me go!"

"That's what I want to hear. True fear. I want you to squeal for me. Like the pig that you are."

A burst of rattling anger numbed the pain and ate up his moment of weakness. "Go to hell, forerunner! You'll pay for this dearly! I will hunt you down! My friends may not show you the same mercy I may do! But you will go to hell for this!"

Murdoch laughed, emitting the opposite reaction of what Sonic wanted. "Oh that's sweet! So much fire! So much passion! Oh we hooked a good one, eh, Joe?"

"Y-Yes, Sir." He said, still holding his damp notebook. Eyes trying to look away from Sonic's. Despite his fat size, he was still fairly young. Perhaps not much older than a teen.

Murdoch turned back to the prisoner at hand. "I will enjoy breaking you, little blue pig. Ever been awake during an operation?"

"N-No…"

"Well, you'll find out exactly how it feels… Joe!" He snapped, turning round briefly to lay annoyed eyes at his partner, "come here and hold his throat while I undo the chains."

"You sure that's a good idea? He'll attack…"

"He's way too weak for that. If starvation and dehydration haven't weakened him yet, the blood loss sure will. Now help me!"

xxxxxxxxx

"Any sign of him yet?" Shadow _hated_ sounding so concerned. Hated Sonic more for throwing him into his awkward position. Sally shook her head while serving out drinks for the outdoor party. It was Amy's birthday, and there still had been no signs of the elusive little hedgehog. "How long has he ever strayed for?"

"A full day and a night." She returned. "He came back at dawn. He did it last year, when he was spending time with Tails during training. But that was when he was with another. He's never been gone this long. I know he likes his runs, but he doesn't like to worry his friends either."

"Haven't you sent out a search party yet?"

"Yes and no. I've sent out Dulcy, as she can fly, but someone would need to be able to cover the whole world to look for him. He's so fast, he'd be gone by the time someone picked up a trail."

"And he's never been gone this long?"

"No. You don't think…?"

Shadow shook his head. Annoyed and angry. He didn't want to worry. It was such an irritating feeling. "I'll go look for that weasel. You stay here and keep yourself busy with the party. I'll be back."

"Shadow," she said just as he turned to go, "look after him if you find him. Make sure he's okay. Promise me."

"I promise."

xxxxxxx

The situation was finally dawning. For so long Sonic held fast, laughing in the face of danger. Rebelling against all and anything. He was proud. Confident. Strong. Now he was a lion, toppled and conquered by man.

And no one was coming for him. No one even knew where he was.

Fat fingers squeezed against his throat while he listened to the chains being undone. First his arms and then his legs. Despite the temptation to explode in their dirty, greasy arms, he forced himself to remain limp and dopey to lull them into a false sense of security. It was the only way.

"Good, good." Murdoch was saying, "lay him down. That's the last of the shackles. Remember, he tries anything and you stab him with this as a last resort."

Sonic craned his head upwards despite the pressure against his throat to see what Murdoch was referring to. Something gleamed in his hand, like glass. He narrowed his eyes and saw what it was. A hypodermic needle.

"What… what is that?" He croaked beneath the strain.

"Oh, this? A little drug called potassium chloride. It is toxic in excess, and if we end up giving you the full dose by say… an unfortunate accident if you are to resist, then you can say goodbye!"

"You are all n-nuts!" Sonic choked, "let me go and I'll tell you how… h-how to use the emeralds!"

"It's not nice to lie!" Murdoch dumped the last of the chains aside, freeing Sonic's ankles and wrists. "Joe, let him up, he has to speak!"

As soon as Joe relaxed a margin of pressure against Sonic's throat, the hedgehog pelted upwards, spraying the fat overlander in blood. The hedgehog spun and kicked Joe outright in the face, boot connecting with jaw. Joe was thrown back, his full weight colliding with the red wall. The sound of fat slamming into concrete was unforgettable.

Murdoch was faster to act. Sonic ducked low, quills sharpening upward like cat claws. Unsheathed and ready. When the human slashed, he caught Sonic's back in one nimble cut.

Angry and spent, Sonic had nothing else on mind but escaping. Shoving the tall overlander back with a spin-dive after curling into a bloody ball, he launched himself towards the door. Uncurling, he stopped at the last iron hurdle. In his panic and dehydrated condition, he failed to remember that the door was solidly locked. Still, he grabbed the handle after jumping up to close the meter long gap of distance. Hands closing on rusty metal he tugged it downwards, but to no avail. Flustered, hot and drained, blood soiling the door he was hugging, he looked down to see the keys connected to Joe's belt. But he was too far, and he was losing too much blood.

Murdoch's arms closed from behind, pinning his arms to his chest.

"Get _off_ me!" He screamed, kicking… uselessly kicking at the air in front.

"Little bitch! You fucking hurt me! And you hurt Joe!"

The next thing he knew, he was slammed into the wall himself. Red and black implosions went off in his eyes… in his very brain. He wanted to fight. Some inner part of him told him to not give in. To kill them. Not to black out…

But he must have done at some stage. When he opened his groggy eyes, he was on the dirty, blood soaked floor, breathing labored. He was lying on his back, not a position he liked. The posture left him feeling too vulnerable. Usually when he napped, he curled up into a fetal position on his side. Not like this…

"Awake? Good." Murdoch came into hazy view. "You gave Joe a headache, but he'll be fine. Nice attempt back there. All you've managed to do is make me hate hedgehogs that much more!"

"Let m-me go." His lips worked through blood. It filled his throat. Coppery stench and the taste of it all over… "Last… chance…"

"Tell me how to use the emeralds. Then freedom is yours. All of it. We'll take you outside. Let you rot on grass. Not in here. Do you want to die in here? Alone?"

It hit him then… he would die. Alone. And this paralyzed him.

Murdoch's invasive hands fell onto his thin body, and foreign, malefic hands roamed over his bony hips. Sonic tried to rise. Slap him off. Bite. Kick. But he fell back against the dirt, too weak and dizzy.

"You know, it's hard to decide where to place the first incision…" Murdoch aloud in thought, "penetrate the knife too deep and you'll die too fast. Your skin is like tissue paper. Nothing to yield against my knife. You can end this by saying what I want to hear."

"Let me go…" Sometimes his sight didn't work. Like a switch to a light coming on and off when it pleased. "Please… I'll give you anything… there's… there's another emerald I can give you that'll m-make the others work! I promise! Without this one… the others are useless!"

"Uh huh." Regardless of Sonic's desperate pleas, he picked up the knife and trailed it delicately over matted, soiled fur. He traced an invisible line from Sonic's groin, across his stomach and up to his sternum. "Did you know that an old God gives power to those who takes animals apart? Like taking machinery apart? Only we're dealing with real life here. Blood pumping through arteries. Tissue. Supple flesh! Pure life!"

"Is that why you're doing this? To please your Gods?"

Murdoch shook his head, tapping the end of the blood-stained knife against his chin, "nope. It's just an old legend. I'm doing this because I can!"

The answer was too simple. Not real… didn't justify the madness… or the pure fact that it did was too much…

The horror made Sonic want to vomit, even when he had no liquids inside him to produce it.

xxxxxxxxxxx

Shadow had been trailing Sonic's tracks for hours. At least he had picked up on them in the first place, which was a God send. Scenting for his odor was difficult, and because he wasn't a true animal, tracking did not come naturally. He began to regret coming out here doing it alone. Tails would be able to do a far better job than he, yet still; he persisted, getting more anxious as he continued. Storm clouds were building on the horizon, and as he progressed with his search, it began to rain.

At last he found a scent mark up a tree where Sonic had rubbed himself against the bark. The scent was old, three days old in fact, and a single blue spine rested on a leaf on the ground. He picked it up, eyes roaming the soft soil for footprints. He came across several, and his heart lifted. This was the break he had been wanting. But tracking a hedgehog that went over 700 mph was nigh impossible. Sonic scurried over grass without barely touching it, and zigzagged or jumped over fallen trees.

Still, he would not give up, and was looking forward to punishing his little blue animal for wasting his time.

Power ring in hand, Shadow jogged through the squelching mud as the rain thickened. As he went, he had to duck low and hide in a jungle of ferns as Robotnik's badnik patrol zoomed past overhead. They were red falcons, pure metal and very deadly. All five flew in formation, scouting the heavens for whatever they were pursuing. Only when the sound of their disturbance had died, did he continue his search.

His travels finally took him to an overlander city. At first he was ready to pass it, go round and try to pick up Sonic's tracks again, for no way would Sonic deal with the likes of them. However, as he was about to go about his set path, he stopped in a gully a mile or so from the town. Tracks again. And a lot of them. Shadow bent down and scanned around, puzzled. He tried to picture what Sonic did here last. His boot prints were everywhere. His scent still old and decaying, but stronger than it had ever been. He had obviously come here and surveyed the town from this shadowed location. But why? What interests did overlanders have that had caught his wild, carefree, hyperactive attention?

Spying on the town, Shadow stood to his full height. There were few people out today. Their fort within the town acted like their keep. A good defense against a siege. And they were always battling against each other.

A red patrol bird, huge and monstrous, had rested on a cliff directly above him without a sound. Shadow looked up, having heard the gentle purr of its engines that only he could hear.

The badnik hadn't seen him.

Curious, unsure, Shadow tried to reach out telepathically with his mind, a foolish thing to try. The technique was weak at best, unpracticed. Nothing to connect with. But as he tried to sense for Sonic, he found something better. Emerald energy. And it was emitting powerfully from the castle itself. All seven of them.

"How in the world have they managed to gather them all? Forerunners? My kind! How?" Now this was surprising. Perhaps Sonic had been drawn towards the same thing?

"Hold up!" He snarled to himself. "Sonic had one chaos emerald that he was about to give me. If they have all seven then… then… fuck!"

They had it. And that likely meant that they had Sonic. Somehow.

But Sonic to get close to overlanders? How in the world had they managed to obtain the fastest living creature alive?

There was only one way to find out.

Unafraid, he skated outright towards the city, and the castle. What he saw was poverty. Everywhere. Flies thick in the air. Starving humans carting wagons and unloading weaponry. Animal bones dangling outside every door like a superstitious charm to ward off evil.

At the sight of him, humans started to angrily shout and proclaim orders to capture him. Shadow; with one mind, headed towards the castle gates. Four guards were posted outside wearing bandit gear with guns holstered to their hips. Smiling at such a weak, pathetic challenge, Shadow raced towards them like a charging bull.

Unperturbed, the forerunners stood their ground and unsheathed their guns. "Halt, or we'll shoot!"

As Shadow came closer still, not intent on stopping, their commander roared, "open FIRE!"

Shadow saw through their bluff. They knew how to carry guns, but didn't know how to use them. It was all a charade. The soldiers couldn't aim, and the youngest of the group, not ready to kill yet, aimed his gun high so that he shot purposely at nothing.

A spurt of chaos energy fed directly from the nest of emeralds tucked safely away in the castle still supplied his ample needs. He knocked the guards back and burst a hole in the massive wooden and iron gate. The fire gnawed repulsively at the wood while the metal began to melt, opening up a small hole. Shadow slipped through and headed into the bowels of the castle.

The throb and power of the emeralds was even stronger. It made him want to rip and melt through walls in his curdling excitement. As he ran through stone corridors, scientists and workers running amok to try and get away from him, he heard the town's sirens working into a high-pitched wail outside. It hurt his ears even this far out.

He passed several cell rooms, all of them retching with the bad odor of death and rot. It was so profound that he had to bury his nose in the crook of his arm as he skated past. The lure of the emeralds made him forget why he had originally come here.

Following the source, a slave to its calling, he found them in a plain, circular room. All seven in their own dish on a stone table with a statue of a forerunner and a vanguard in the centre.

All seven present.

A guard came on top of him from behind. "Filthy beast!" He cried, blasting out a shell from a shotgun. Shadow cart wheeled away just before getting his head blown off.

"Fools shouldn't mess with such power!" Shadow retorted, kicking the man in the arm. The action was so strong that it broke the forerunner's arm. The shotgun was dropped, and it fired as it hit the floor. The recoil hit a young man running up the passageway. He fell the instant the discharge went off. "If you use these emeralds," Shadow roared at the man with the broken arm, "you could use these as nuclear energy and nuke the whole world! Because that is what your kind are like!"

"Mercy! Mercy O devil!" Groveled the man, hiding his head behind his hands.

"Pathetic."

xxxxxxxx

"Murdoch! The sirens!"

"So what? It doesn't affect us and our job now, does it?" He wiped the bloodied knife against the fabric of his jeans to clean the blade. "Well, we're pretty much done with him anyway."

"Can't you get anything else out of him?"

"Nope. We'll have to find another. There's plenty o' fish in the sea. Now hurry up and dispose of him."

xxxxxx

Throwing the emeralds into a brown bag, Shadow hauled it over his shoulder and left the holy room. The sirens had got to this place too, and a female voice spoke through the intercoms laced about the complex. _"Intruder warning. Intruder warning. Incoming attack. Report to all stations. Repeat, incoming attack. Full Alert. Report to all stations."_

As he ran, jogging casually through the stone passageways, he felt a _twang_ of unsettled feelings pressing into his inner being. A flurry of dark emotions: mixtures of pure fear, distress and mental panic.

He stood still in the corridor, hand slack on the neck of the bag holding the emeralds. He turned, ears pricked. "Sonic! How could I have been so foolish?" Cursing, hating his own stupidity, he ran off in another direction. A male forerunner wearing a robe and a beard was thrown out of his way – one handed. For now, he could do with hurting his own kindred.

Another ran at him, guns firing. The forerunner carried a rare submachine gun that was limited to non-tipped casing rounds that didn't make such a mess of flesh, bones or furniture if it was sprayed senselessly. Shadow threw the bag of emeralds at him, not only blinding the forerunner's temporal vision, but distracting him in one swift gesture. Sliding along the ground by changing the angle of his weight and keeping the speed propelling him forwards, Shadow knocked the man over by hurling into his legs at the same time the bag was thrown at his face. The machine gun went off, its bullets striking the belly of the stone ceiling.

Grabbing the bag nonchalantly as if he had done nothing special, Shadow rose to his feet and continued his rescue. With a spark from his fingertips, he started a fire behind him. Curtains, dry and gaunt against a window, caught the dry embers and went up like starved straw.

_Let this castle burn._

He followed the source of the distress, constantly on alert in case he got jumped or fired upon. He came to a vulgar door soiled with rust and damp age. He went to lower the handle, and only found resistance.

_Locked!_

Like_ that_ was going to stop him.

With a waft of pure chaos, the door busted its hinges and went slamming against the wall within, revealing the dismal, blood soaked room in all its glory. Sonic lay on the floor, bloody and limp. A fat human was just doing his pants up while another tall, thin human hung back, staring at him with little black eyes. There was nothing special about these two at all; they were like all the others he had faced. Dirty, filth-ridden and full of fear. But when he looked at Sonic, realizing that the mental screams he had been hearing were form him all along, he exploded.

He went for the fat one, and slammed him into the floor using his hammer-break technique that made the very paving slabs buckle and snap.

Joe dead and done with, he looked over and covered the distance between him and Murdoch in seconds. The forerunner cried out, running for the open door. Shadow caught his rump and pelted him into the wall. Skull cracked, teeth loose, Murdoch slid down the wall, beaten.

With a hungry fire gathering speed and strength right outside, Shadow ran over to Sonic after ripping a length of fabric off of Murdoch's shirt and used it to cover Sonic's dignity. Only then did he lift his upper torso into his arms, his free hand finding the lethal knife wounds and healing them with his chaos energies. The flesh on each wound began to bind together, speeding up a natural healing process. However, the blood Sonic had lost could not be replaced this way, and the stomach wound, worst of all sustained injuries, was much slower closing such a disjointed, bloodied grin across his sore belly.

"Sonic? Hey, it's me. I'm getting you out of here."

"Sh-Sha…" Eyes tried to open.

"Yeah. You're safe now. They aren't going to hurt you anymore."

Sonic looked past him, at the floor to his left. Curious, Shadow turned himself to see what had so grabbed his immediate attention. An empty hypodermic needle lay on the dusty floor, but nothing else.

"Hold on, Sonic. I'm going to carry you out. You're going to be okay."

"They're going to h-hurt me… want to use chaos e-emeralds…" He was delirious and very weak. He had lost too much blood.

Shadow couldn't carry him out just yet. Relaxing his grip on him somewhat, he lay a hand on his quivering chest and delivered a gentle dose of energy into his system. It was not something he had tried before, and was worried this would make Sonic worse. If so, he could use the power ring. But Sonic's body took the energy in, and there were no immediate adverse affects. With new life, Sonic opened his eyes.

"Here," Shadow said, easing the power ring onto his limp wrist, "in case you need it. Right now, I'm getting you out of here. Hold on." He lifted him effortlessly. Sonic had lost a lot of weight. The fire at the door was letting off thick reams of black smoke. The castle was a dry stalk, soaking up the destruction like a candle. They had to get out.

Carrying Sonic tightly, hand holding the bag of emeralds, Shadow opened another door, hoping that it would lead to outside. He was very wrong. In the room was a giant lump of something that was covered by a canvas of cloth. Ripping it off revealed a massive egg bomb that filled the height of the room, its sides smooth and silky black. It had a timer on its outer casing, counting down to 0. It was on 5 seconds, and Shadow held his breath. They had just lumbered into another trap.

Closing his eyes and pitching backwards in despair, he awaited their final end. The 5 seconds passed, and no explosion foiled their mortal existence.

The clock read 0. And there was no blast.

"The oil. We have to get out of here!" Sonic said, pointing at an oil and gas leak beneath the ebony egg.

Stepping away, Shadow picked up the pace through the corridor. "Eggman must have placed it there."

"He wants this castle destroyed, but he may have remotely stopped the explosion." Sonic said against the fluff of Shadow's chest.

"Why?"

"Because he knows we have the emeralds, a-and he doesn't want them d-destroyed. He must have set the bomb up earlier… knowing these overlanders to be a t-threat. He has spies everywhere, so it wouldn't be unusual for something like that to be set up here."

The fire touched down on the oil. The explosion was catastrophic. With Shadow running, he barely avoided the debris and shrapnel in time. he looked up through the hungry fires to see Eggman in his hover vehicle flying straight towards them, eyes full of angry hate, the red guardians flying close behind him in tight formation. There was nowhere else to run, and Sonic was too weak to do much.

"Chaos control!" Shadow shouted in one breath without sharing the plan. And they snapped out of existence.

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><p>Dib: Okay, next is the real chapter from where we left them in the crystal tower!<p> 


	12. Chapter 10 The Monster in the Tower

**~ Fantasia Down: Darkness of Eternity ~**

By Dib07

Disclaimer: Sonic and Shadow belong to SEGA. This story is purely for fun. The idea however, is mine.

**Rating: T **

After a chaos control that seems to have split time and dimension, Shadow and Sonic find themselves in another world. A world where they are alone. Until the night falls. They must recollect the emeralds, survive and fight to find an answer. But when darkness comes, so do the vanguard. As black and as lethal as death herself. And after each emerald comes a new threat to tear down their lives.

Time is running out. Each trap gets more deadly. The riddles more complex. The darkness grows.

This new world is rotten with secrets.

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><p><strong>Chapter 10: The Monster in the Crystal Tower<strong>

Finally, Shadow rested on a heap of crystal shards, covered in blood. He had gone through four glass walls. Shattered each and every one of them.

_Get up, get up!_

He could smell it rather than hear it coming for him.

The odor tainted the air like bad gas. And then the sickly sound of its insectile legs crawling, thudding, clawing against the glass as it struggled to push its way through narrow corridors to get to him.

Shadow rose inch by precious inch using his arms as levers to straighten up his back that felt needled with blunt daggers. _So much for all of Sonic__'__s hard work._

It hurt. So bad. All he could see was red. Deep, bright red against the plain mirrors. Everywhere.

Glass clattered and snapped from his body as he drew his legs up, spacing his hands out on the floor to raise himself up. The first tentacle slithered round the first hole he had made in the glass. Then its massive, ginger and red body oozed into view like some blob from a cheap horror flick.

It was like someone had put it together from using creatures all over the world. It didn't make sense. Like the birds and the vanguard.

"Man, wizards have a sick sense of fucking humor -"

He struggled upright. It was crawling closer. Its tall, ridged back that looked as though it was veiled with shielding, scrapped along the ceiling like a sauntering beetle.

Shadow dropped back to the floor again, shivering from shock.

_One hit brought me down! ONE HIT!_

One of its tentacles snapped forward like elastic and aimed straight at him. On instinct Shadow rolled out of the way, covering himself in more glass that stuck into his spines like bloodied decorations. The long appendage hit the wall behind him, cracking it in two. Then both sides slunk down like water and smashed into tiny crystals.

Shadow smiled. He knew what he had to do now.

_Sonic, we__'__re getting out of here._

_xxxxxxx_

Sonic heard the first smash when Shadow was sent hurling through four walls of strong glass. He paused instantly, ears pining to the noise somewhere far away. In fact it sounded like it was coming - above him.

Using his agile speed and light weight, he powered his way upwards on the glass using calculated steps of his feet and hit the ceiling. Something gave way - a panel was loose. He smashed at it again with a spin and he shot up into another corridor - that sadly looked the same.

The panel he had just jumped through snapped shut. He rolled onto his feet and tried to raise it up with his fingers. No avail. He tugged at it. He tried to smash it with his spins. The effort only made him more dizzy and hot.

"Fuck - it's like there's no air in this place - so easy to burn up -" He swept the building perspiration from his brow and continued forwards, thinking that this place spiraled upwards so sullenly, so discreetly that he didn't even feel the gentle sloping of the next levels. And the ceiling and this new floor proved it. It was a tower after all. So what was at the top?

He tried pouncing up the close walls, but each attack, every effort to go to each new level wore terribly on him. After going up five levels he sat in a corner, panting heavily. Fur was saturated in sweat. Even his socks were wet with it.

"No good - no good."

Another crash. Splittingly loud and disruptive. It sounded like the whole tower was throbbing with destruction. And he was closer to it. But had yet to find out if that was a good thing.

Leaving puddles of moisture behind him he staggered forwards, using the walls as support.

Another trifling _crash _made him jar to a stop, ears flat against his wet skull. Then he could smell the sweet coppery shade of blood. And something else. Something rotten and disgusting - like eggs that had gone off. He remembered Shadow showing him some bad cheese once. He wanted to know what cheese was. But the portion Shadow wanted him to taste had turned so bad it had gone green and wet with bacteria that smelt strongly like what he was scenting now.

Accompanied by his slender reflections that showed an army of Sonic's, he nervously went on, holding his nose against the smell. A wall had been broken. _Wow, they can actually be damaged?_

Several in fact, had been breached. Each one shattered to bits where a steel frame remained. On the floor was pieces of glass and long splashes of blood.

_Shadow -_

Forgetting self-preservation and caution he bolted through the broken walls, following the blood, the cabbage peels and the vile, putrid stink.

Round a corner he almost ran straight into a giant insects' abdomen that was swollen and green with poison. Its back was so tall it arched across the ceiling, seemingly protected by a coating of hard rock or metal.

"What the -?"

Ignoring him the _thing _trawled on with its current progress, heading through the glass passage and never getting stuck, despite its bulk.

Sonic double backed and went a different way, hearing another long, ear-shattering smash of glass.

Sprinting along, running with his images in a flash of pale peach and blue he skidded round a corner (not slamming into it this time) he hurdled on and braked to a halt to see Shadow plough through a glass wall.

"SHADES!"

Shadow struggled up, utterly smothered by long, jagged knives of glass that dug into his body at horribly grotesque angles. "Sonic - I'm doing it! We'll get out! I've figured it out!"

"What the seven hells are you DOING to yourself?"

He looked to the right, through the wall Shadow had flown through. The monster - he could see it from the front now, bending under the glass ceiling and oozing towards the Ultimate Life Form with thick, trunk like insect legs. Its lower frontal body was carpeted in long spikes, making attack suicidal. But where its face should have been were long, meaty tentacles.

Sonic ran over to the black hedgehog (well, now more red than black) and hauled him up from the glass. He felt limp and heavy against him. "Shadow, get up and we'll run! We have to get out of here!"

"I'm already doing it!" Shadow spat crimson. Then he gathered enough strength to knock Sonic away from him before he managed to pull himself up on all fours. "You'll see! You'll see! Just whatever you do, don't kill it!

"Have you gone mad?"

The monster's stink made Sonic want to gag. His eyes watered. But Shadow, insistent and obsessively single minded with some insane, illogical objective, kept on, actually rising onto two legs and stepping forward. A tentacle slapped at the sides of the glass near him as the monster drew closer, seemingly wrenching its whole weight through corridors as fast as it was able.

_Who left such a thing in here? Wouldn__'__t it starve, alone and cooped up?_

Sonic put an arm round Shadow's shoulders, avoiding the sticking glass, and helped him wobble on. A long, powerful swipe crashed over their heads - a bad aim on the monster's part, opening the way through for them. Shadow found the strength to hurry on, smiling despite it all. "Nearly there."

"Nearly where?"

The rearing appendages of the beast, able to adjust their length, spewed at them and they both tumbled into the next glass wall, unable to save themselves at the suddenness.

Shadow choked out, spent and limp in the mass of yet more shining glass. Sonic tried to shake him, nudge him awake. But it was no use.

"Shadow!"

He turned to the beast carefully routing its way over the glass with its centipede limbs. Its fat, ugly abdomen at the end vomiting green sludge - and it was this that gave off the bad smell.

"HEY!" He yelled at it, turning through the yet-to-be-smashed glass passages and waving his arms over his head, "over here you great big fat -"

It worked. The distraction sent it away from Shadow and straight for him. Sonic gulped but remained steady.

The tentacles raced towards him. Thanks to his incredible agility and reaction time, he was able to avoid them every time. It was like fighting against one of Eggman's machines. Felt and remembered how they moved and _what _they went for.

Kicking one back, it sunk into its fellows like mush and then rebounded, refreshing their attack as if they felt no pain. As if the bodice of the monster was made from plastic and not blood or flesh.

The tinge of an emerald, closer now, cooed over his ears and heart like raw, promising power. It had to be close. Real close. Maybe that was what Shadow was trying to do! Leading the monster towards the emerald and forcing the way through. Who needed a maze when you had something powerful enough to cheat and make shortcuts?

He locked onto the slobbering, foul beast and waved his arms up once more, sweaty and panting, "over here! Aren't you ugly! A god must have shat you out for sure!"

It reared up. Five tentacles pounced up like dark vanguards and plunged into the wall behind Sonic, knocking down possible reflections and causing a new entryway. But dodging in the nick of time was not easy. No wonder Shadow had failed. If you managed to flee the beast, avoiding the explosion of glass was another thing. Already three long slithers of glass had neatly stabbed themselves into Sonic's soft blue pelt. Blood welled against the glass but he knew removing them would be stupid. Unless of course he wanted to bleed slowly to death in a glass maze.

"Nearly there, I should think." He jumped up and down before the beast, clapping his hands and whistling. "Fucker! I'm here! Aim a little better please! I need to get through to the emerald!"

As the crashing and smashing of the glass continued, Sonic dived and hop-scotched before the beast, dancing around each limb of tentacle and shadowing each wall he wanted to get through. The beast, unknowing, went according to his plan. Obviously brainless despite its immense brawn.

Glass burst and peppered the air with each launch of a long, alien limb.

_How many more walls? And to think Shadow thought he was so close too._

Sonic slipped on the glass as he tried to roll and swerve through the air like a graceful ballerina. He misjudged a step and got slung through a wall as Shadow had experienced. The power of one tentacle was terrible. And trying to kill such a thing - when you couldn't even get close to it. Knowing that murdering the _thing_ would prevent further access to the emerald quickly.

Another glass wall came down like a waterfall in slow motion, only jagged bullets of glass sprayed out instead of water.

Blood.

Pain.

He was weakening too much. The monster crawled on like a puppet. Happy until nothing living remained. And Sonic was sure that would be the only outcome.

_Why are we here, Shades? Are we being punished? Does anyone - anyone deserve this?_


	13. Chapter 11 Losing some Faith

**Dib07: Thanks for all your reviews. I hope this latest chapter will satisfy you for a little bit longer.**

**Meowtastix: Damn, you're good! I think this chapter has what you wanted and more! :p You have good insight! Thanks for reviewing! ^_^**

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><p><strong>Chapter eleven: Losing some Faith<strong>

'_The wild beasts of the forest came, _

_Broke from their bughts and faulds the tame,_

_And goved around, charmed and amazed:_

_Even the dull cattle crooned and gazed,_

_And murmured, and looked with anxious pain.__'_

_The Rapture of Kilmeny - James Hogg_

The glassy innards of a crystal spectrum glittered with millions of fragments that spilled and cut the air with an icy touch. Sonic, cut by a second tentacle after skipping away from the first, was pushed through another wall. Red fluid sweated down his arms in new colors. He pawed desperately at the perspiration gripping his fur on his muzzle.

"Ah - no - no good." Sonic opened his eyes and saw that he had been tossed into a much larger room than the others. Up against the wall like a broken doll, he inched his way up and saw a long pedestal in the centre of the room. And glowing on that pedestal was the next emerald. Its fashioned hue, its elixir of virtuous life on Mobius, now looked more like poison. It was this emerald, in the middle of a labyrinth that was killing them with their struggles to obtain it.

Seven seemed like such a high number.

Rising, drawing his feet up below him to gain some balance back, he retched away from the wall that had been splattered with his blood and limped forwards. "Have to lead - the monster - away - have to - get it away -"

It had done what Shadow had wanted all along. Break the way through for them. A sullen, tactful way of fooling the maze. But also risking their own lives in their haste to get out of such a cursed place.

Pitifully hobbling, shambling even, on two legs, ready to ease back on all fours, he went to the left through the intricate tunnels of the glass prison, not bothering to clap or make lots of noise. It was left with no other targets now except him. Shadow had passed out some five corridors down. And the emerald was exposed, until some fateful trap would slam a trick door into place, thus sealing them forever.

Shuffling his way along, walking haltingly to pause for breath and to freeze against a new seizure of pain from the embedded glass, he reached a little bit more distance between him and the creature at every turn. Every corner. When he was greeted with deadends he took a new route even before he realized he was doing it.

Soon he became lost again, but the pestilent reek of the ugly fucker was weak and he was able to pant in the stale, dry air of the crystal maze.

Soon he made his way back round and towards a comatose hedgehog in a pile of glass and blood. Shadow was lying on his stomach, hands splayed in front of his head as if he had been reaching for the next bit of floor to drag himself along with.

"Shades - hang on -" Struggling, breathing heavily, Sonic heaved him up over his shoulder and rested one of his black and red arms over his chest as he started to lift himself up and saunter slowly through the shattered gaps in the walls where the monster had ripped the way through.

It was so hard. Shadow's weight was so great. He must have weighed at least two hundred pounds.

Sonic grit his teeth and took each step, on and on.

His sneakers crunched upon a floor of nothing but broken glass fragments. Shadow moaned dreamily beside his ear, but must have nodded back off again, for he remained limp and unconscious.

The stink of the beast was relapsing. Its pong raced through the corridor like a stink bomb that someone had dropped close by. Sonic doubted it could get lost in its own maze - wished it could, and pressed on. Harder.

He hobbled over the last gap of wall and lay Shadow down on the glass floor near the foot of the crystal pedestal. The light blue emerald reflected back its own reflections, making the whole room shine with lightly blue colored gems of a million duplications. But its frail beauty was something Sonic ignored. He hurried to the glass pillar and saw a dark veil smothered over the gem. The words; '_The centre of defeat, Is a giver, despite its deceit__'_were chipped into the glass below it.

At least, that was what he thought it said. Hard to read. Overlander language never had suited him. And the pedestal reached up to his chest, so he didn't have be on tiptoe and strain to read it.

The rancid smell of bad eggs started to fume the emerald chamber. It was coming on those fat stick legs. Roaming the tentacles forward like feelers.

_The centre of defeat - a giver - despite deceit -_

"Shadow, a little help here?" He asked with a playful frown as he gazed over the hedgehog's prone form. "I know, I know. It's forerunner garble, but hey, good thing I started reading some of Gerald's books on experimental research but it sure was dull. Are you listening to me? Gah I'm never going to eat eggs again! Not that I do! But boy that fucking stinks! Shit Shades, isn't that waking you up?"

The words teased him. The riddle was like the first with the fire. Shadow had been a pro to figure that out on the spot, but it was sort of easy when you didn't have ten tons of monster flesh creeping up behind you.

"Elements you said, right? Like fire, water, earth and - what was the other one? Oh yeah - air. Right - air is not the centre of defeat. We rely on it too much. And it's nowhere near as destructive as - let's say - fire."

_Come, come on! Which one?_

Sonic tried to blow on the emerald anyway. No. Definitely not air.

Earth? Screw that, he had no earth. Lots of blood and glass. But no earth.

"Water!" _My least favorite of all the elements._

When he was sick one day he remembered lying in Sally's bed, bored, yet tired and feverish. Sally came and sat beside him, stroking through his fur and telling him little things. "Everybody is tied to an element," she would say softly in the light glow of the candles, "mine is fire."

"How so?" He asked, not really paying attention.

"Well, I have a fiery personality. I am impatient. Like you. I like to take charge and dominate all others. I consume what I touch in other words. And I am always hungry for adventure. For power. For the answers."

"And what am I?" He remembered himself asking, but enjoyed the cuddles he was receiving. Not about the elements.

"You are water."

"Are you high or something? I _hate _water, Sal. Can't even stand - baths."

"Well, you are very deep. You are secretive sometimes. And submissive when you have to be. You're swift and changeable. Like the sea. And you - you are my opposite. Which makes us one. You dowse my fire if I become too angry or reckless. You stabilize me. Whereas I can warm you up or chill you down. You Sonic, are water."

Back in the crystal chamber, Shadow bleeding all over the floor, the _thud_ of the monster's approach, Sonic stared at the diadem locking the emerald in place. _Water. _"How do I make water happen?"

He made a quick dash to Shadow's loose bag that had been wrapped several times round his shoulders. He threw out the glass shards that had somehow got in and rummaged through the junky emeralds. No flask of water. Only bruised fruit and broken vegetables.

_What a waste of three seconds._

Then a thought came to him. _Sweat! Salvia! That__'__s water isn__'__t it?_

Feeling faintly embarrassed as he heard the tentacle monstrosity sludge itself round the last and final corner, he spat at the diadem while crossing his fingers for luck. The diadem's light beamed out and the dark blackness shadowing the emerald slipped away. He plucked the emerald at once and chucked it carelessly into a very bloody bag.

A little door opened up on the floor amongst all the painful reflections of the glass to reveal a chute going all the way downwards. The sight of it was a trifle scary. But so far it was their only way out.

Limping towards Shadow, he grabbed his arms and began dragging him to the chute.

The tentacles, black and long, snaked along the last tunnel towards them, picking up speed. Its ambling reflections came large and steady.

It was almost on top of them.

Then -

"Oh no! The words!"

He parked Shadow by the edge of the chute and stumbled back to the pedestal. He slipped from the blood and hit his skull against it but the thick pillar of glass didn't even vibrate. Such a delicate thing he expected to come shattering down. The only thing it did do was double in his vision so that he was seeing two pillars of glass instead of one.

"The words -"

He reached up, leaning against it as a support.

The riddle had changed into three letters and two numbers.

_OOO. 77_

The leviathan sludge monster, looking like a part of every ugly creature glued together by a child, squeezed into the chamber and shot out five of its long tentacles like missiles once it was close enough.

Sonic spun into a tight ball to get away from it, but to curl into such a position hurt his insides because of the imbedded glass.

Sprawling away from his defensive curl, he landed near the chute and grabbed Shadow's limp hand. Making sure the bag was secure, he pushed himself along the floor and into the chute, pulling his comrade closely to him.

He let the pull of gravity do the rest.

And indeed it sucked them in, like a tireless mouth. Away they went, sliding down the tunnel into the next nightmare of the unknown.

xxxx

It was the most beautiful dawn Sonic had ever seen. After they had both tumbled most ungracefully from the chute, they were harshly spat out of a pipe and into a pond. Wet. Bloody. Exhausted, Sonic dragged a sloppy Ultimate Life Form from the water and left him on the grass to dry while picking out the worst of his slabs of glass. And then the dawn. So warm. So soft and welcoming.

A new sun, young and innocent, came to rise again over dark vanguard territory. They had made it just in time. _Were we really in that tower all night?_

The plains, valleys, villages and forests were creamed into a reddening, dawning color. And the freedom of seeing it made Sonic feel so mortal and fragile. So helpless to these traps. How ominous and impending each one was.

Peeling out the most lethal of the glass spikes from matted black fur, Sonic moved Shadow from the pond and into a dryer, shadier spot on the edge of a small forest where the trees stood over them like tall, watchful giants.

It was good to see the rocky hills ahead. Good to see what was coming. And good to know that for now, they were alone again.

_That chute was too small for that monster. It can__'__t follow us - But can it break out?_

Nevertheless he looked over at the hole they had come careering out of and the pond that was now red and murky. The crystal tower itself could be seen in the far distance, its peak just visible over the boldest hills. They had travelled a long way underground. Far from it. And it was no use climbing the chute to get in if they had known about it in the beginning. The panel that had opened within may have been unbreakable from the outside. And to travel vertical in a tunnel to reach the top? Hedgehogs found it hard enough to climb rocky spires, let alone slippery, salacious chutes.

_You never know. Maybe the monster even __'__started__'__ in that room with the chaos emerald. Anything__'__s possible, right?_

For the majority of the morning, Sonic took care of Shadow's cuts and weeping wounds. Many of them, the worst in particular, were still bleeding, even after using good, moist compresses that he dampened using the pond to keep them glued to his fur. Luckily this odd, awful place had plenty of ordinary medicinal herbs to use and exploit.

Patching up Shadow's worst injuries, Sonic patiently tried to get him to drink some water using a cup of leaves. It was long and tedious. Much of the water slipped down his chin or ran down the sides of his mouth. Though unconscious, Shadow seemed very resistant, even towards help.

Finally Sonic lay in the dewy grass after plucking out his own glass shards and let the open wounds bleed.

The wind softly played at his ears and tufts of fur. The normality of the insects, buzzing away, doing what insects did in their grassy paradise, sent him straight to sleep.

xxxx

Shadow snarled awake. He gripped the grass and vented out earthy, pained cries that snapped Sonic to alertness in a single second.

"Shades? Shades are you okay?" He went to touch him, but Shadow hit him away.

"Get away from me! Fuck you! Don't - don't touch me!"

"Shades -"

"Fuck you!" He looked down at his arms in modest surprise to see the deep gashes there. Then at the slashes the glass had made across his rump, chest and legs.

"Shadow - hey, it's okay. It's just that you might have some internal damage - I -"

Shadow eyed him darkly, his soft, throaty voice harrowing into threats, "shit, what are you, a doctor? Fuck you Sonic. I'll snap your little neck off if you fucking help me!" He ripped some of his own compresses off, the ones Sonic had so tenderly worked on earlier. He staggered up and bowed into the darkness of the chillier forest, kicking off his boots and disappearing.

Shadow was gone a long time.

Sonic licked his shallower cuts and bound the worst ones with herby poultice to keep the flies off it. Then he opened Shadow's bag and munched into the bits of vegetable that still looked recognizable. The rest was either mush - or more mush. Half the cabbages were gone. Mysteriously having vanished from the bag.

He left the forest in search of fresher water. A long, snaky stream lined a shrubbery of loose woodland filled with muddy leaves not far from the bloodied pipe they had whistled out of. He dipped his face to the water's surface and drank.

His return bequeathed no Shadow. For at instant he stared, wide eyed into the woodland orifice, expecting him to reappear, limping and cursing as before. Coming back and apologizing.

No luck.

So Sonic sorely laid himself down against the trunk of a birch tree and peered up at its bright green leaves serenading in the wispy breezes. It didn't feel like merely hours ago they were locked tight in a crystal dungeon that would have made them go mad sooner than they would have died of thirst.

"Emeralds are all dead anyway. Whenever we touch them, they go out. Like a light. Maybe there is no way out -" The vanguard seemed to eat the whole world dry each night. And every day - what - the meagre population of gawks and goodness knows what else just popped back into place again? Why? Whatever for? If things didn't have a purpose, then why did they exist at all?

"They'll be a way out."

Sonic's ears bent backwards at the sound of twigs being snapped and undergrowth being churned by feet. As he looked round, Shadow loomed out from the shade of the trees, looking battle scarred. His left eye was droopy with a fresh bloody cut that he must have tried to clean. The rest of his pelt was littered with bruising and long slashes.

"Shades - how are you feeling -"

"Better." He stood closer but didn't sit down. "I don't know how you did it. But we're out. And I trust you do have the emerald and the words and numbers that so appeared after you solved the riddle? But I'm only speculating."

His condescending words did get noticed. Sonic shrugged, doing his best to hide a scowl. "It's in the bag. Light blue. You're lucky I can read a bit of overlander. What - with you passed out all over the floor of the maze like a drunk -"

"Hey, if it wasn't for my great idea, we would have perished. Well, by the looks of things you must have figured it out - at least some of it - and followed it through."

"There could have been an easier way out."

"Yeah? Says you?" Shadow folded his arms, wincing a little at the agony it ensued.

Sonic sat back against the tree and strenuously added, "well, this is great, isn't it? I know where we are now."

"Where then?"

"Hell. This place - this world is our hell! Think about it - the chaos emeralds are here because we as animals are completely obsessed with them! I mean, no one else uses them! Just us! Me and you! We are predicable! We use them to breathe!"

"Get to the point!"

"It's like an eternal dream! The here and now! And when we finally accomplish all the traps and get the last emerald - we'll start all over again! We'll never know! Maybe we've done this eight, maybe twenty times already! Forever! And your chaos control that started this whole mess probably was the thing that killed us and took us straight to hell! So thanks a lot!"

"Are you insane? Did those glass panels warp your pretty little head?" Shadow vehemently snipped, "once we have the emeralds my little blue friend, this will all be over!"

"How can you be so sure?" Sonic rested his hands in his lap and spared him a glance.

"Because I feel it! Why else would each fucking gem be so cunningly stowed into the heart of a trap? Someone wants us to climb our way to the top, otherwise it wouldn't be there! Besides, don't you get a kick out of each randy adventure? Aren't you the positive hero who baffles his foes with charms and slick moves?"

Sonic grimaced at him, "me? Adventure? What adventure can you call this? This is a nightmare of insanity! I - I refuse to think that this place is the past like you so forwardly put." The blue hedgehog simpered sadly, clenching his fists and relaxing them. Only to ball them into fists over and over. "It's over. Over. We'll die - maybe the vanguard will have us - and then we'll reappear - doing it all over again."

Shadow bent down as much as the pain allowed and rose Sonic's chin to force him to look dismally into his eyes. "Why is it just us two then? There has to be a reason for that!"

"Why does there have to be? Why can't it just be random, and we just _happened _to end up here?"

"Oh I give up with you! Fine, quit and be done with it!"

Sonic glared daggers at him and slapped his hand away. "Go away. I don't want to be stuck with you anymore. I want to be alone."

"I just left you alone ten minutes ago."

"Go away again then."

Shadow huffed and sat away from him, some thirty yards distance out in the pleasing sun that warmed and dried his terrible cuts.

Sonic slunk deeper into the woodland and nestled in the hollow of a tree trunk, allowing his racing mind to slow and chill to a new, relaxing pace. He tried to shove his questions and ideals of the world aside so that he had the strength enough to remember. Back to home. Where he was with his friends. Where Shadow was but a visitor from the Ark. When finding an emerald was just a lucky epiphany. And where he played with Sally in a darkened room and no monsters lurked.

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Dib07: Nearly there, everyone! Ever so nearly! Two more traps to go, I believe!


	14. Chapter 12 The Temple

**Dib07: Dear ShadowEnpress76, I know you will enjoy this chapter and the many to come. You have reminded me what I should have known all along. Thank you.**

**Meowtastix** - amazing review. Thanks so much. Lol, Shadow looooves his cursing! ^_^ Blood you want? Well... we shall see!

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><p><strong>Chapter twelve: The Temple<strong>

_'There is a temple in ruin stands,_

_Fashioned by long-forgotten hands;_

_Two or three columns, and many a stone,_

_Marble and granite, with grass o'ergrown._

_Out upon time! it will leave no more_

_Of the things to come than the things before!'_

_Alp's Vision - Lord Byron_

Shadow, teetering silently and tenderly along the woodland floor like a worried deer, came over to Sonic's circle of space and stopped within the boundaries. His hard red eyes glinted in a sad distillation.

"Hey," he cooed softly, ears forward and engaged, "Sonic - you aren't still mad at me, are you?"

Sonic's answer was a stony silence. His sleek back, dotted his glass wounds, was all that faced him.

"Look," he began uneasily, gripping his hands into fists and then releasing them again, "I'm proud of you. You - you really held it together in there. And you were alone - up against everything - while I foolishly didn't think into trying to open a better way through. But you held out and did what I couldn't. Sonic - I'm sorry and I know you're scared - but we'll get out of this."

"I'm sorry too." Sonic's voice was small and timid. "Yet - we have each other, don't we?"

Shadow trod deeper into the shade, minding the thick ferns that swamped the wood with green virtue. Finally he stood over Sonic and placed a supportive hand on his shoulder.

"Well," Sonic shrugged conspicuously, eyes wide and puzzled as if he had just seen an answer to life but still couldn't understand it, "we have been moving further upland. Gone to different places. We didn't see the gawks until a little later as well."

"That maybe so, but we haven't been moving very far at all. At the very beginning we could see the crystal tower in the distance when we first got here. We've been going round in circles, collecting the emeralds and not travelling too far unnecessarily."

"Wanna hear another thing that creeps me out?" Sonic said shyly, looking thinner than before in the grey light of the aging afternoon, "the gawks that we tried to dine with at the bar - they showed - or rather gave us a plate with a vanguard's head on it. Eyes grinning like those teeth it had. Wasn't that weird? Why would they do that if they are enemies with those black, hairy monsters? They got attacked that night. Yet they had one like a trophy. And on the wall - the painted portrait in that house - something's not all right here."

Shadow's face was pale and pinched. "What are you getting at?"

"That this world is like a joke. So macabre and morbid, and yet it holds these humorless gags - almost as if they're aimed for us. Haven't you noticed that - at all, buddy? Surely?"

"It doesn't matter, does it?" Shadow said with a rasp of grim passion, "we're getting out of this. The traps are getting harder - the mirror tower was insane, but we are just two emeralds away now. So we aren't allowed to give up, no matter what throws itself in our path. Besides, who else is going to rescue us? Collecting the damn emeralds is our _only _hope. You'll do well to remember that."

Sonic sat quiet and submissive under the rocking shade of the trees as a hurried wind raftered through the branches. He opened the bag, still rather hungry, to look for more suitable food when he saw the little silver key. They still had it. Nothing was in that crystal tower to open it with.

"Now -" Shadow slowly edged up to his feet, wincing with his healing wounds. The compresses had helped stem the bleeding, but they could only do so much. "We must get on. We only have six hours of daylight left. Less perhaps. We must move on to the next emerald. I - I can barely feel it - so it must be much further than the previous ones."

"But Shades, you aren't ready to travel yet - your injuries -"

"I'll be fine." He snapped darkly, eyes cynical and ridiculing, "I can be pushed far beyond my limits."

"But every creature has a limit, no matter how powerful or advanced they are."

"Is that a fact?" Shadow's voice was like crystal cold ice. Then he turned his back on him and started heading west through the deciduous trees like an unwonted traveler. Sonic cursed, grabbed the bag and roused to follow.

Shadow must have felt really pressed. A simple walk turned into a run. And then from a run into a full on blast of speed. Sonic easily kept up, feeling the heavily cold winds roll over them in waves. The forests sank away behind them. New valleys split with ravines invited them through their dusty depths. Clouds raftered easterly above them. The sun grinned low and satisfied.

Their final stop for the rest of the journey brought them to an iridescent lake. It was a wide body of water, ringed by tall, gaunt pines that were mirrored in its reflection along its verges. As the wind soughed through the pines Shadow and Sonic drank the fresh water and picked up pine cones to eat later as well as tidy little mushrooms and nuts. The soft breezes here carried the aroma of fir and sweet resin. The terrain was cropped by mountains. Old mountains that were rounded and humbled by time.

Picking up the pace and leaving such a serene, tranquil world that seemed unconnected with the rest of the evil they were striving through, they resumed the way east, Shadow following the far and dim call of the emeralds.

Soaking up the last of the sunshine as they zipped across haggard, rough ground, they saw gawk villages. Small, stone dwellings pocketed in ravines, adulating valleys or even clasped in small, littered woodlands. Both hedgehogs kept running as fast as they could without wearing themselves too thinly.

The sun, grave and still, was sinking. There had been no signs of indigenous caves where so many vanguard could sit and wait until darkness. "Maybe we'll see them rise up from thin air if we keep going?" Sonic asked against the whipping wind.

Shadow, unsettled, didn't answer.

The hedgehogs had covered an easy hundred miles before the sun started to glide from sight, the mountains smothering it once and for all. And the darkness reaped.

A signaling howl, far behind them, was joined by a dozen more. A chorus of the coming death and war that would swiftly clasp the land like it did every single night.

Being so dark now, they used the small light of the overhanging moon to guide them through the trees and over rocks and small streams. Shadow rose to take the lead, but they were still much too far from the closet emerald. And so far there was no available cover. Just gawk villages and dimpled little trees and bushes.

The howls mounted. Dark and empty. Long and direful.

Sonic shifted closer to Shadow's flanks as they kicked along the floor, racing slightly faster now and leaving a smote of grey and green dust behind their tails. The first tearing scream came from what could have been the gawks. And then a whole crowd of primitive raptors, a pack, thronged towards them of red and yellow reptiles, scared out of their minds. So many of them that Sonic and Shadow had to separate and shunt through them, unable to go round. The dinosaurs didn't seem to notice them at all and kept sprinting in the opposite direction, jumping up over each other like maddened migrating wildebeest.

Their small, light bodies now felt lethal and strong as the whole force of the pack came down on them in the darkness. It was not only hard to see, but easy to lose your direction. Sonic jumped and dodged over many, but he slipped over a reptile's back and hit the dusty floor. He rose quickly, but a group of them bashed right into him, sending him further back into the crowd.

Their open teeth and claws cut past him. The larger ones, perhaps the adult males, leapt and charged recklessly, hurtling their own kind into the feet of the onslaught.

Just when Sonic thought it couldn't get any worse, a black wolf jumped into the frock and stole its huge jaws over the neck of a fleeing raptor. At once all the running reptiles sprung away from it, changing direction and bumping madly into each other.

Another wolf darted into the pack and slew two more easily. White teeth, syringed with glee, rose up and cut iron hard into the little raptors. Blood and guts joined the dust. The screams rose to a fever pitch. Sonic darted round the last of the fleeing group and rejoined Shadow on the other side. A wolf lunged at them, but they ducked and it haplessly flew over their ears.

"Run!" Shadow grunted and skated up a slope and over a hill.

Following, Sonic made one quick glance over his shoulder. The dinosaurs were all being killed, one by one. The ones that were dead fell and were savaged by the running feet of their own kind. But the vanguards weren't doing it for hunger. They were just killing. Over and over. Once they slew one or two, they went for more. Finally a black avalanche of wolves plunged over the reptiles like a soaring tide and swallowed the last of them in darkness. None escaped.

The same was happening everywhere, like a horror film. The villages they bolted past were on fire. Gawks lay dead outside their houses, being savaged and eaten by tireless wolves. Some who were gorging themselves on a rich world of meat, keenly spotted the fleeing hedgehogs and went for them. But soon it was lost in the dust.

They were still almost a hundred miles from the current emerald they were racing to. And while everything else not quick enough to avoid the vanguard were being eaten, they stood a better chance of remaining alive. But once everything was gone, the vanguard would finally turn their sights on them.

Red eyes glittered mercilessly in the darkness, still a fair distance away. The screams had all been eaten up. They had heard nothing from the other creatures for a good while now. And that was worrying. Did anything still live at all?

As they kept running, his wounds that the glass had made really starting to nag. Black wolves started sprinting down hills, silhouetted by the moonlight. They teeth bled white, while their eyes seemed to chase them, completely bodiless in the overthrowing night.

Sonic pressed forward and started to slowly overtake Shadow. "If we went at full pelt, we could lose these guys." He was saying, "and if they got in the way, they'd be toast. And we'd reach the emerald in half the time. Maybe less."

"I'm not as fast as you." Shadow confessed with little emotion as he kept his gaze straight ahead, "you could, there's nothing stopping you. But I cannot run much faster than this."

"You can! I'll grab a hold of you. It'll be easy. Otherwise we'll be ambushed sooner or later. You've got to trust me."

Shadow glittered with a wan smile. "Fine. Grab my hand, though this time, go easy on the corners."

"I will." He returned gleefully, grabbing his comrade's balled fist at once, bursting into new speeds . The world creamed away into blues and greens. Sky and grass. Shadow, eyes watering, couldn't even see the vanguard. Only the rolling dark land and the moon that somehow kept still in the sky.

The miles were dropping away.

All Shadow could hear was the roar and rape of the wind tearing at his body and down his ear canals like the resounding hiss of a dragon chorus. Sonic kept dead ahead, not turning or changing direction down to a single inch. His fine art of running in one direction, without tripping or stalling, felt magical. And it made Shadow feel incapable without such speeds. Incapable and slow.

The proximity of the one emerald they were racing too engulfed him with its power. It was close. So close. An animalistic pleasure of longing to clasp it spilled and wept over his body like a fever.

He sensed Sonic slowing down.

The strength of the wind abating, Shadow peered out ahead and saw a long string of faraway mountains drawing closer and closer as if the two hedgehogs were being sucked in. These ones, like at the lake, were sloped and soft with natural weathering. Their tops were feathered green with nature instead of snow and ice.

Sonic zipped up and over the last hill separating them from their destination. There appeared to be no sign of the vanguard.

The tall, rocky sculptures of nature towered over their little, insignificant forms and made the darkness of night that little bit darker. Sonic almost stumbled to a stop, Shadow buffeting against his back like a doll, causing him to fall over with him neatly sprawled on top. As they gathered themselves up, they were in plain sight of a temple. An old, archaic temple loitered with cracks, weeds and plant growth that must have thrived over it, undisturbed for years, or so it appeared. It hugged the side of the mountain, still looking immense despite the colossal cliffs above it.

The outside was cropped with stone. Marble pillars sat wedged under a low stone roof that protruded for two metres out from under a cave wall. But within the building itself it was black and fathomless.

"This must be it." Shadow muttered wryly. "It's in there. You did well."

"I always do!" Sonic snickered confidently. "Now I guess we just knock. Unless we wait until daylight to see who lives here exactly."

Shadow wore a predatory look. "Fool. I am getting off this insane ride as soon as I can. I'm not hanging around every night to proceed when the daytime comes."

"But -" Sonic, looking nonplussed, watched Shadow wave him off and stalk immediately towards the unwelcoming mouth of a building that looked in every detail as if the forerunners' had built it.

Shrugging, Sonic peeked over his shoulder to spy the vanguard who had silently approached since the hedgehogs arrival. Like back at the house, they stood round the temple in a half circle, their braying bodies reaching each side of the mountain from each side of the building, covering any exit. Neither did they, as a mass, approach. They stood, grinning. Claws raking the ground. Salvia oozing from their hideous mouths.

Shuddering, Sonic entered the temple at a light dash.

Within, the walls lit up on their approach like motion lights. The walls, bathed in a yellowish gold hue, lit up the floors and ceilings of a narrow corridor lipped with old stone markings and dry torches. Shadow was already further up ahead, metres from a grave stone door that halted any further passage.

Sonic wondered up, in positive awe of the place. He walked up a set of low stone steps, velvety with green moss.

"Shades, how can the walls light up? What's making them do that?"

"I don't know." Shadow was gazing at the walls himself, face ashy and pale but set.

Passing him, Sonic strode up to the door and a golden dial set beside it in the lee of the corner. It was about the size of his fist and it gleamed brilliantly like it was brand new. It was in the shape of an octagon. Sonic moved his fingers over it and started turning the dial, looking at the tiny pictures of a sun, water, mountain and what could have resembled a cloud. He switched a small flame emblem around, wondering if this device was the key to unlock the door.

Suddenly all the pictures on the dial clicked into place and lit up to a sickly green. Shadow broke from his reverie and sudden, inexplicable panic flushed through him.

"Sonic! No! Don't! It's a trap!"

It was too late.

Sonic, who had just retracted his hand from the contraption, was overthrown with a bulbous green light that enveloped his whole body from the dial. In moments the green turned into a pure, hot white glow, basking them both in all its deadly glory. Then the glow became a blaze, engulfing the hedgehog like a greedy fire.

"Sonic!" Shadow stepped back, raising his hands to shield his face from the dire light. Electricity cackled and burned, zapping the walls and ceiling, scorching what stone it touched.

The little blue hero, trapped by the impending force of chaotic energy being forcibly injected into him, threw his head back and screamed. A sound so unbearable that Shadow pressed his ears flat against his skull.

"Sonic!"

He didn't know what to do, or if he could even touch him and risk being engulfed as well. All that he could do was stare on in horror, unable to look away. Morbid, twisted fascination, locked with sadness and disgust, made him look and gape. Unable to help himself or his fellow partner.

At last the electric current stemmed and weakened, releasing the hedgehog. Sonic, unable to stand, tottered stupidly on legs that refused to work, before slumping to the floor.

Shadow, mouth slack with horror, rushed over to him and pulled him into an upright position. Sonic sagged in his hold.

"Sonic!" His elder comrade snapped in a vestige of rage, "you should've learnt by now not to touch things! Especially if they could be traps! This isn't Mobius anymore! Not the Mobius we know!"

Sonic opened his lidded eyes, his gaze unfocused. "Shades -"

"Fool - What did you do?"

He sat there in the bask of the glowing walls, holding him. The dial had seemingly gone back to normal. It sat golden and ready as if it was still unused. A virgin tool.

Sonic grimaced, in an ocean of pain. He edged himself up in small, stiff efforts, Shadow still clutching him protectively.

"Dials are supposed to be - harmless -" He rasped out between hard, laboured breaths.

"Well apparently not this one." Shadow helped him stand, biting his teeth in sympathy for him. "It hasn't burnt you. Electricity normally does. In fact it was more like an overloaded course of emerald energy. One that doesn't help when touched."

"Figures -" He nodded at Shadow to let him go.

The elder one did, reluctantly. He then rose up to the dial where the little pictures had been reset. "These emblems are the elements, nimwit! You must have set them in random order. Fuck! The elements are the answers to the riddles we've been solving! You do them in the order we found them in! Have you learnt nothing at all?"

"Yes!" Sonic smiled with a tired wink in his direction, "that I'd be useless without you!" Came his sarcastic reply.

"Damn right."

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><p>Dib07: LOLZ, that's a wrap until next time! Oh yeah!<p> 


	15. Chapter 13 No Intermission

**Dib07:** Lol sorry for the looong update. Been busy! ^_^

**Meowtastix**: Hiya! Hope you still be reading this and hope you don't need to recap too much! Lol! Anyway, thanks so much for your comments always!

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><p><strong>Chapter 13: No Intermission<strong>

'_Waking or asleep, _

_Thou of death must dream_

_Things more true and deep_

_Than we mortals dream.__'_

_Ode to the Skylark - Percy Bysshe Shelley_

Shaking from fatigue, Shadow linked the pictures up with each corresponding element they had solved through their current collection of five chaos emeralds. Once it was clicked in, the dial glowed a pale yellow and the stone door swung open from the inside.

Sonic proceeded with Shadow in front, feeling the gold ring on his wrist for spiritual support and good luck. They entered a wide, spacious passage. Its walls were stretched out so wide that a mammoth could easily stand facing the centre. The ceiling was unreachable. And here the walls glowed like the corridor they had come through, lighting the way ahead. The only way ahead was straight forward through an open block of old stone, leeched with green fungus and dust. On the floor, metres from the little doorway they came through, out in the middle of the stone passage was some eight large generic crocodiles on the floor. Dead. They all lay inert close to each other as if some mass hysteria had led them down here, only to die all at once.

"What the -?" Sonic stepped lightly up to the sprawled bodies of the crocs, paying close attention to any sudden movements. He poked one with the tip of his sneaker and got no response. "Looks like they've been gassed. What else could have done this?"

Shadow spat at the floor and walked carelessly through them, unafraid of one of Mobius' greatest predators when they were once in their prime before the mutations. He even stepped on a few of them in his way. "Nobody could have. They're too fresh. They couldn't have been down here more than an hour."

"So what - gives?" Sonic said, minding them as he hurried to keep up with a bruised and battered Shadow.

It felt like they were deep underground. Moving down all the way slowly so that you barely even noticed it. The stale air was dry and rotten. Water trickled from the damp ceilings as if they were passing deep beneath a water source. The stone walls, ceiling and floor were all precariously smooth. No cracks or unkempt crevices. "Somebody must have worked on this for a long time."

"Forerunners must have built it." Shadow implored from further ahead, his soft, strong voice ending flatly in the dank atmosphere. "Either way the emerald is right at the very end. It's a straight walk there and a straight walk back."

Sonic grinned and stretched his back that was still tingling from the effect of all that overzealous electricity. He was recovering better from it now - which proved that it had been chaos energy - too much of it, like a lethal serum of an addictive drug. "This will be easy then. With that crystal tower we just got chucked in - this will be like drinking a cup of tea."

Shadow snorted darkly, maybe in assent or rebuking his childish mannerisms.

After a good few minutes of trawling on, they came to a sizable gap in the old stone floor. Sonic noticed Shadow breach to a standstill in one of the middle of his strides. Catching up to him, he peered down at the chasm Shadow had discovered. The hole in itself looked purposely made. With everything else so keenly polished and in place, the gap looked cut clean away, opening a nasty space of one hundred feet across. There were small ledges to go around it, but that would take time. And the ledges didn't particularly look stable.

Sonic whistled and tried to look down it. All that faced him was an open maw of infinite blackness that not even a vanguard's pelt could challenge.

Shadow sniffed at it. "No drafts. No air. It must go a long way down."

So they side stepped along the ledges bordering the massive hole, pinning themselves against the walls and shifting along it inch by inch. When they reached the safety of the other side, they looked back at it in mild accomplishment.

"We'll have to face that on the way back." Sonic muttered.

Shadow looked on in cold approval. "Whoever made these traps, is a genius."

Soon however they came to another obstacle. This one too was out of place and purposely built like the chasm. Three separate walls lining the width of the passage were thick, wooden bars. Like prison bars. Sonic, being so thin, passed straight through them without even feeling the press of wood against his fur. Shadow tried to do the same and got stuck halfway. He tried to squeeze his way out, grunting with the strain. Sonic grabbed his hand and hauled him all the way through, combing their way slowly through the three layers of bars, Shadow cursing at every stage. When they had ended up on the other side, Shadow gave them a vengeful glare. "What was the purpose of that?"

"Think about it, forerunners would be too large and fat to fit through those bars. And they'd take a while to give under force. So that rules the gawks out, who would be too large and clumsy to take to the ledges on that hole too."

"It's like it's meant - for us." Shadow kneaded his temples. "We have taken each test and passed. Maybe it's just coincidence."

"But you said that this world is Mobius' past! Everything is old, isn't it?"

"Yes but Mobius could never have been this lifeless? Could it? Where are your dragons, Sonic? Where are the apes and generic beasts that bred and lived before the mutations? This world doesn't hold the ecosystem to have the foundations to gain such a bountiful, complex pool of life that comes in the future. If it does at all. And if the vanguard are possibly as real as you and me - which I sorely doubt - then they'd gobble up anything that has a chance at life. This planet we're on DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!"

Sonic's face darkened into a pained grimace. "Then I'm right. This is hell. Nothing makes sense in hell. Why would it need to? Chaos control killed us, and now we're stuck here - forever."

"Why would we go to hell? I've never done anything wrong!" Shadow groped at the air with his fingers, then he hung limp on the spot, peering endlessly up at the glowing walls for an unreachable answer.

"Then what does it mean?"

"I - I don't know. Maybe there is no heaven then. Maybe all of religion is a lie and none of it is true. That just leaves a blank void - a place of limbo. Neither hell or heaven. And no afterlife either."

Sonic shook his head and touched the face of a glowing wall. It sent shivers of warmth through his fingers.

"But Shades - we're together. That's weird. And we need to eat and drink. Rest too. And we get hurt. Does that still make us dead?"

Shadow growled and a solemn passion strengthened his otherwise confused features. "No. The answers will lie in the last emerald. We must carry on."

_Just two more to go._

They came across a series of spikes. Long, smooth cone shaped spikes that had been made from the same material as the wooden beams of the wall bars they had passed earlier. These ones were also strange and different. They all pointed diagonally upward at the way ahead, like swords poised half way from the ground.

Shadow liked keeping to a fixed, slow walk, which slowly and surely annoyed the cobalt hero. Wasn't it better to race up to the end, snatch the emerald and come hurtling back down again? Wasn't it easier to ignore what traps and fears didn't exist and go with instincts? To leap without looking?

Sonic opened his mouth to voice his opinion when they came across another odd bit of flooring that wound up as they travelled slowly upward and came to a block of long, colored squares that stretched out beyond their sight. There were only four different colors in a repetitive fashion. Red squares, yellow, blue and lastly green. Shadow approached the green one and ran his finger along it. No ink or paint mark came off. As if the stone itself had been marbled by the chosen color.

Shadow rose and looked stonily up at the floor littered with these tightly splayed colors. "Remember those small colored panels back at the booby trapped house with the interchanging stone walls?"

Sonic nodded. "How could I forget that?"

"Well, I think these are like that. Different colors mean different traps. I could be wrong, but why else would they be here?"

"We have to cross them, all the same."

"Yes. I touched the green one. So I am assuming that green is safe." As further proof to this equation, Shadow bodily stepped out onto the green panel, tensing for anything to happen. The passage remained deafly silent. Nothing moved except for Sonic who stepped onto the green tile beside him. It was barely large enough to hold two hedgehogs, but they squeezed together side by side until Shadow hopped over onto another green one that was separated by a yellow and a red. The jumps were easy. Another green to lead them further was never too far away. There was one leap that proved a little more challenging. Right at the end of the long tile charade was a single green one surrounded by blue tiles. Sonic was tempted to try standing on another color at this point. It was foolish he knew, but what if Shadow was wrong?

'_Well, I think these are like that. Different colors mean different traps. I could be wrong, but why else you they be here?'_

And why did it just so happen that the only tile Shadow originally touched was the green 'safe' one?

It couldn't have been pure luck alone? Could it?

Sonic strayed on the second from last green tile after Shadow had managed the last jump and made it neatly to the other side like a grumpy champion. What if Shadow had caused chaos control on purpose? And had led them here to recollect the emeralds in a world he had designed?

"But why would he do that?" Sonic found himself asking. "What if I am dreaming?"

Shadow turned round and threw him an imputative glare. "Sonic? What's wrong? Take the last jump."

Sonic did, with a half mind to land purposely on one of the blue ones circling the green. But he landed true and met the other end of safety. Back on normal stone.

_Was it ever normal to begin with?_

"Shades, what if we're just being played with?"

Shadow remained stolid and firm as he walked on, quicker now, homing in on the emerald's closing beacon like a bee to honey. "Does it matter? We're being played with enough as it is. But look around you, blue hedgehog. Is there anyone really watching?"

_Is there?_

The passage stretched massively on like a roadway to either a heaven or a hell. Shadow sublimely kept on, regardless. Sonic found his hard, cold demeanor more and more difficult to tolerant. Before long Sonic knew he'd be ripping his fur out and shaking Shadow senseless, hoping to see some creature still alive and breathing behind those bitter eyes of his. His exterior was just so frigid and spiritless. Yet at the same time, perhaps Shadow was taking up this affront to keep them both going. To keep them both pressing on without rest or giving into emotions like fear, anxiety and worry.

He could only hope.

Still the passage leapt on along the gleaming walls, smothered with the sense of eternity.

"Shades, let's run the last bit. Come on, we must nearly be there by now!"

Shadow huffed and didn't turn to glare at him. "If we run we could activate a trap. Unless you want that to happen."

His tone held that horrible patronizing quality that Sonic detested beyond comprehension. But he held his tongue. He'd bring it up once they were out of here, stark naked with fear or not, depending on what could happen in this dead place.

Misshapen and foully formed like looming lumps of termite mounds, tall rocks sat like columns of something perversely ancient by the walls. Some even touched the ceiling with their heads, towering over the two animals completely. Their smooth, polished sides looked impossible to climb. And again their presence here seemed utterly, persistently - pointless.

"Maybe they were deities for someone?" Sonic asked. "Normal rocks can't form down here. I - I don't get it."

Shadow walked straight on through some of the ten oddly shaped towering pillars of rock that felt natural - but looked far from it. There was no key - no element or clue of what could have made such a place. A passage that consisted of numerous different things that didn't fit in with one another - the riddles - the evil vanguard. The gawks and the perfectly inlaid traps suffusing each emerald.

"Shades, do you think we are merely dreaming?"

Shadow showed a few of his teeth, "perhaps."

Then, utter and divine, as pure as Aztec gold, stood the emerald. It shone with seraphic hues of white. The silvery white emerald. Deemed sixth of the seventh. And like the trapped others before it, the emerald sat mounted on a pedestal low enough for a little hedgehog to reach. Shadow stared suspiciously at it and noticed something different.

"Sonic - wait -"

They stood before it, mounting with anticipation to grab it and be done with it. Sonic sent his elder a deep, questioning look. "Wait for what? This is what we came for. And I want out of this place. It gives me the creeps. At least the mirror tower held some task - some purpose. But this place is -"

"No, the emerald. It's not covered by a vial. It's open to take. Isn't that - odd?"

Sonic stared. So it was.

"Maybe they forgot to cover it?"

Shadow stepped up to it and read the new riddle enlisted below the shining emerald.

'_It shines bright and fair. Enfolding everything in its lustrous glare.__'_

"Ah, easy."

Sonic's ears prowled forward, his eyes scanning the riddle for himself. "It's light. The answer is light."

"But there is nothing to make light with." Shadow seemed right. Though the walls glowed, it was only a faint gleam. An unproud, almost artificial moonshine that paled in comparison to real daylight. There was no fire this time. No torches from which to burn from. And certainly nothing else usable, even throughout the long haul through the passage.

"Let's just take the emerald." Sonic suggested.

"No. We need the code and the words. Each answer of a riddle comes with that."

Sonic shrank back. "We can go back and fetch - some fire?"

Shadow bit his lip, ears swerving back in puzzlement. "Light -" Light - the founder of everything living. The maker. The dreamer. The giver. Nothing could make that. Nothing artificial.

_Why make a riddle we can__'__t solve? Even if we knew the answer?_

He gazed idly at Sonic who was peering back down the gaping throat of the passage they had journeyed slowly through - and now seemed like an unwelcome and pointless trip back. Back to the waiting vanguard at the other end.

The golden ring, possibly the last in all the cosmos, hung limply from Sonic's wrist like an expensive, gaudy bangle.

Golden ring -

The light -

At once he had it. "Sonic! Your ring! Take it off!"

In surprise and shock, Sonic looked round, gaping in confusion. "Ring? What? Why?"

"Its light, you dolt! This is it! The key!"

Sonic took it off and handed it over, looking displeased despite Shadow's apparent stroke of genius. "I was saving that for a tight situation."

"Isn't this situation tight enough?"

Shadow squeezed his grip on its smooth, thin metal. Sonic, ears bent back, hovered close, perplexed and bewildered at what Shadow intended to do.

With the strength of willpower, the ring activated, sending a _whoosh _of supreme energy and light around them, annihilating any dark corners, destroying shadows and causing the hedgehogs to flinch under its brilliance. The light swooned like a gentle cocoon over the emerald and its riddle, changing the words into a code and a new set of letters.

The ring died out, becoming gelid, dull gold. Shadow dropped it as if it were common rubbish and noted the code and the letters with barely even a glance. _Uuidndtu 48._

Sonic stared absently at the ring lying still and dead on the floor where seconds ago it had been brimming with limitless life and energy. It made him feel the same. Brimming with life once - before it all started draining out of him. Now he felt close to being like that ring. Spent and tired.

Shadow caught his far-off look and nudged him dispassionately. "We have an emerald to pick up. Come on, I can't have you daydreaming on me. Not here."

The white emerald glowed appreciatively, intoxicatingly.

Sonic took the emerald, rather sore at expecting another shock. Nothing harmed him. The emerald he gripped tight but then the walls turned into a fiery red glow, losing their senescent peel of light gold and turning into something nightmarish.

The ceiling shook - if it could, and sent loose rock spilling from it like hail. Shadow grabbed Sonic's hand and pulled him forward. "Sonic! We have to _go_!"

Everything was convulsing. The walls throbbed and twisted into shadows of stone and hate. The massive pillars - the upright turds of rock - flooded towards them, shattering the floor in a domino effect. Sonic wrestled free from Shadow's grip and missed a boulder that thrashed down to the floor close behind his flank. Another rocked and tumbled just before him, almost crushing his head. Shadow jumped over a fallen column of giant rock and sprinted down the passage as if the vanguard were chasing him.

Sonic looked behind him. And wish he hadn't looked at all.

Everything coiled into a bad dream of slow motion. Shadow was shouting at him. But Sonic couldn't make out the words.

The pedestal was gone. The back wall - marking the end of the passage - was gone. All that existed was true darkness eating at the walls, ceiling and floor in hungry doses. All the bricks, tireless stones and debris fell away into this macabre void, never to appear again.

_Impossible! Impossible!_

'_Whoever made these traps, is a genius.'_

"SONIC!" Shadow clenched his arm again and yanked him free from his paralysis of shock that had rendered his senses in a cold stupor. "Don't look at it! It's just another trap! Another obstacle!"

"It's - it's like a blackhole!"

Able to run on his own now they galloped fiercely down the passage, assessing their true speeds, except for Sonic who had to nail down his limit so that he wouldn't leave Shadow behind. He was about to grab his hand to reel him forwards like a fish to make a faster escape when they dashed recklessly across the colored tiles - touching every single color as they torpedoed through it.

As soon as a red one was touched, a dock of arrows jabbed from tiny holes in the walls and shot at them point blank. Another color was touched, releasing hundreds of spitting, rancid snakes before them.

Shadow ducked to avoid the arrows and skidded across a green tile as a snake got caught on his foot and then proceeded to bite him with uncouth aggression. Sonic jumped lithely over a bunch of wriggling, menacingly snakes, only to turn and watch them fall into the angry darkness that was racing towards them like a bat with open wings. Walls and chunks of stone disappeared in its touch. It was getting closer - its speed was frightening.

The spikes. Their purpose, their odd reason for being put there for no reason at all made perfect sense now. The passage was now their exit, a downward slope instead of an upward one. And now they were running straight towards the lances of stone that looked fresh, sharp and as irate as the gobbling darkness behind them.

Shadow slipped and fell across the floor towards the spikes. An emerald - the green one - tumbled out of his bag that was slung around his shoulder and was thrown into the jumble of pillared spikes. Sonic lashed out to grab it. He slipped under one spike and narrowly avoided having his left ear sliced off.

Shadow balanced himself upside down on his hands and somersaulted over the spikes, covering them completely like a ballerina, landing superbly on his feet.

Sonic grappled with the emerald that had sunk down the fat base of the spike, knowing that his time was running short.

He clutched at the emerald. The floor beneath him started to crawl with twisting thuds and quakes. He rose and jumped neatly over each spike that promised pain and mutilation. But they acted like a wall, prinking him and throwing him back. Shadow reached out from behind the throng of sharp stone and reached out a hand for him.

Sonic took it and was propelled safely through.

Just in time.

The long stone spikes were taken like a sacrifice into the absolute blackness that had no intention of stopping. It consumed them utterly as easily as it had done the floors and walls.

The hedgehogs floored it, tearing down the sloping corridor for their very lives. The walls far ahead of them were cracking and being pulled in by the very consuming blackness breathing down their necks.

Next came the three, thick rounded bars of wood. This time it did not slow them. On instinct the two of them curled up into a ball and slammed into the wood, spinning and cutting. They sliced through and leapt back to their feet, belting towards the exit.

The gap in the stone floor rallied up to their greetings once more like an old friend. When they had passed it the first time they had used the ledges to scuttle round it, the jump being simply too far to risk. Shadow had even tried to peer down its length, seeing no bottom to behold.

The darkness slobbering at their heels bayed no time to slink around ledges. This time they had no choice but to leap or die.

At once, with silent consent, they leapt up high. In the suspension, flying through the air, Sonic looked at the awaiting stone ground on the other side and heard the rumble and crunch behind him from the blackness lapping up anything that light touched. Three quarters of the passage had already been swallowed up. Gone. Like the corridor housing an emerald had been nothing more than lunch.

Legs still stretching out across a bleak gap in a reflexive run, Shadow landed on the other side and hit the floor - hard, and was carried on by his own momentum, scuffling across the floor on his front like a seal. Sonic landed and tripped up, rolling down the slope most painfully. He fell right into the crocodile pile of cadavers. But the dead bodies rose up and snapped their powerful jaws at the surprised hog, closing their teeth around his arms. Shadow jetted out chaos energy and snapped them back. One was so harshly catapulted that its lower jaw was ripped off and its body smacked against the red gloating wall.

The cobalt hedgehog squirmed free but slipped down again, forcing Shadow to pull him to his feet and pull him towards their exit. The door. But it was now closed. When they had left it, it was open.

The sneering crocodiles began pacing towards them, actually rather fast and nimble on their squatty little legs when they were capering for a meal. Dead or not. And their eyes birthed pure red, like the demon vanguards of this world.

As Sonic kicked and spiked them back with the ripping blackness racing to conquer them all, Shadow could not get the door open. It was wedged shut. Only a keyhole resided in its centre - like some sick, twisted joke.

"Sonic! The door! I can't get it open!"

The blackness was rolling up. They'd all die.

The walls shunted out their last goodbyes. The crocs were sucked in, their red eyes feasibly plummeting into a cold, hellish abyss.

"The key! The silver key!" Sonic dived into the bag and pulled out the tiny silver cut of metal. He braced it into the lock and turned it. The door opened and they tumbled through it just as the darkness lunged at the last inch of passageway, smiting any last patch of stone.

Panting, and heavy with sweat, they turned on the floor and stared at the solemn blackness gaping in the doorway. Beneath their hands and feet was ordinary stone. It was not chasing them here. Whatever had lunged after them remained in the original trap passageway as if some invisible force was holding it all in. And it was not escaping. Not wrinkling out like the monster in the crystal tower.

It looked - contained - even though it had swiped the passage utterly clean into its gluttonous dark belly.

Sonic numbly - slowly and with difficulty - rose and stood by the doorway, clasping a sweaty hand to the stone frame, peering out.

Blackness. True and formidable. Nothing else existed. And that was all he saw - in there. No crocodiles. No rumpled stone walls. No light of any kind. It was like having your eyes shut.

Nothingness.

Sonic stepped away and collapsed back on the floor beside a shuddering Shadow. A pool of sweat had bled out around him. "You were saying this would be easy as drinking a cup to tea?"


End file.
